November 5, 2009
GASC: Egyptian inspectors must check wheat at foreign ports
Egyptian officials said Wednesday (November 4) that trade houses that win wheat tenders will have to send Egyptian inspectors from the agriculture quarantine to check wheat at foreign ports before it is shipped to Egypt.
"We will recommend to wheat suppliers a number of agriculture quarantine inspectors to check wheat at the country of origin before it is shipped to Egypt," said Nomani Nasr, vice chairman of Egypt's General Authority for Supply Commodities, or GASC.
"The issue was being dealt with at the private-sector level," he added. "The wheat suppliers are responsible for facilitating the inspectors' travel requirements and visas."
Egyptian Ministry of Trade said earlier Wednesday that it will inspect all wheat for import into Egypt at foreign ports.
The new policy comes after a series of incidents in which Egypt detained imported wheat for containing impurities.
This will be applied this month starting from the first coming tender, said Hesham Ragab, the advisor of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Egypt's GASC said Wednesday it was tendering to buy 55,000 to 60,000 tonnes of wheat on a free-on-board basis.
Upon entry into Egypt, the wheat will be inspected by officials from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture and the General Organization for Imports and Exports Control, or GOIEC.
Last week, a shipment of US wheat held for extra testing at an Egyptian port resumed discharging.
The shipment, being delivered by Cargill Inc. to Egypt's GASC, wasn't allowed to complete discharging after an initial sample showed it contained more than the legal limit of seeds.
In mid-October, another shipment containing 63,000 tonnes of French wheat was released after treatment. It was seized for containing 44 poisonous and impure seeds a kilogram.
The delayed discharge of the wheat follows months of increased scrutiny of wheat imports into Egypt, after authorities quarantined 52,501 tonnes of Russian wheat in May, because it found weed seeds and dead insects in the grain.
