Russia will provide 120,000 tons of wheat supplies to Egypt before a duty on grain exports takes effect on February 1, Vice Chairman of the Arab republic’s General Authority for Supply Commodities /GASC/ Mamdouh Abdel Fattah said.
The volume will be bought up in a span of ten days starting from January 21, or until the export duty is introduced, Itar Tass reported.
Fattah said that in January, Egypt was due to import a total of 180,000 tons of wheat from Russia and “the suppliers have vowed to fulfill conditions of the sealed contracts.”
Russia is the third largest supplier of grain to Egypt, covering some 26.3% or 765,000 tons of grain of the import demands over the past six months.
France ranks first in wheat exports to Egypt with 36% or one million tons over the same period, followed by Romania with 26.8% or 780,000 tons.
Cairo has bought a total of 2.9 million tons of grain over a six-month period.
Earlier, Cairo announced that restrictions on grain exports imposed by Russia were not going to pose any risks to Egypt as it had strategic reserves which would last till mid-April 2015. By that time local farmers are expected to provide about 3.6 million tons.
Russian government said the duty on wheat exports would amount to 15% of the customs cost plus 7.5 euro, but not less than 35 euro per ton from February 1, 2015.
