Egypt to buy 1m tonnes of Kazakhstan wheat

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

31 Aug 2008

Egypt has agreed to buy a million tonnes of wheat from Kazakhstan to meet local market needs, and has discussed building silos to store Kazakh wheat on Egypt's north coast, state-owned Al Ahram newspaper said on Saturday. Al Ahram said that Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohammad Rachid had agreed in principle to the Kazakh deal in talks with President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Friday in Astana. Egypt is one of the world's largest wheat importers. It bought at least 6.5 million tonnes of overseas- origin wheat in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, much of that from Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan.
The Egyptian newspaper did not say how much Egypt would pay for the Kazakh wheat, nor when the purchases would be made or whether the wheat would be bought through the government's main wheat-buying agency, GASC.

Source: Reuters