Egypt allocates 45 billion EGP to purchase local wheat from farmers

The Egyptian Ministry of Finance allocated 45 billion EGP to purchase local wheat from farmers this year, with an increase of more than 19 billion EGP compared to the last year, said Minister Mohamed Maait in a statement on Friday.

The government has started to buy the local wheat from the beginning of this April to the mid-August, with an additional cost to increase the price of one ardab (150 kilograms) by 74% from 865 EGP to 1,500 EGP, Maait added.

The increase in the wheat purchase price comes with the implementation of the presidential directives to support farmers and encourage them to expand the cultivation of strategic crops like wheat, in a way that contributes to achieving self-sufficiency.

Egypt has been suffering from a crisis of wheat supply from conflicting Russia and Ukraine, the two biggest wheat importers to Egypt. So, the government is targeting to increase the area of the wheat crops by 1.5 million feddans over the few coming years in accordance with a new study conducted by the Egyptian Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC).