July 9, 2010

Egypt eyes Pakistani wheat imports

Egypt has expressed its desire to import Pakistan's wheat and in return would help Pakistan in improving its irrigation system, and offer fellowship programmes to agricultural scientists, said Ambassador Amer.

Egypt's Ambassador to Pakistan Magdy Amer held a meeting with the Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Cooperatives Nazar Muhammad Gondal last Wednesday (July 7) to discuss the possible areas of cooperation.

Pakistan has shown its interest to benefit from the Egyptian experience in the modernisation of irrigation system and this has been officially communicated to Cairo at the highest level.

Matters relating to the economic cooperation between Pakistan and Egypt will come up for discussion during an upcoming meeting of the joint working group to be held in Cairo ahead of President Zardari's visit to that country in September or October this year.

Currently, Egypt is meeting its requirements by importing US, EU and Argentinean wheat. Now, the country has also decided to buy Pakistani wheat. Egypt needs six to seven million tonnes of wheat annually to bridge the deficit.

"Pakistan's wheat is the best in the world and Egypt must import it," Mr Gondal told the Egyptian ambassador. Pakistan can also export other products such as meat to the North African country.

He stressed the need to develop institutional linkages between the Economic Research Department of Pakistan and the Agricultural Research Centre (ARC) of Egypt for exchange of expertise, experience, information and data of joint research studies.

With regard to Egypt's fellowships offer for agricultural scientists, Mr Gondal proposed that the farmers in Pakistan need to be imparted with on-farm training because they are the real stakeholders and the implementing body.