Egypt's new minister of supplies, Mohamed Abu Shadi, a
62-year-old former police general with a doctorate in economics has said that the
biggest mistake deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made was stopping
wheat imports.
The new minister of supplies pledged to ensure that supplies of
a strategic good like wheat do not reach the critically low levels they did
during Morsi's year in office.
He said Morsi's government made "incorrect
calculations" regarding Egypt's wheat stocks.
The estimates made by former supplies minister Bassem Ouda,
who hails from Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, were "based on guesses, not on
facts," Abu Shadi told Reuters in an interview.
When asked why Morsi's administration was unable to
accurately assess its wheat stocks, a crucial issue for a country where much of
the population of 84 million relies on heavily subsidized loaves of bread, Abu
Shadi replied:
"That was why he left."
Abu Shadi said Egypt's current stocks of wheat were enough
to last until Nov. 25 adding that after the arrival of 480,000 tonnes purchased
this month, Egypt would have stocks to last until the end of the year.
Abu Shadi said the military-backed interim government would
aim to increase total stocks to between 5 million and 6.5 million tonnes by the
end of Egypt's current fiscal year next June. He said the government currently
had reserves of 3-6 million to 3.7 million tonnes of local wheat and 500,000 of
imported wheat.
Sworn in last week as part of the military-backed interim
government running the country, Abu Shadi is in charge of regulating wheat
stocks and dealing with the subsidized fuel and bread system that eats up
almost a quarter of the state's budget.
Bread has long been a sensitive issue in Egypt. Mubarak
faced unrest in 2008 when the rising price of wheat caused shortages. Similar
problems in the 1970s provoked riots against former President Anwar Sadat.
Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, but it froze
its international purchase for months, from February until the eve of Morsi's
overthrow on July 3, hoping for a bigger domestic crop. It was its longest
absence from the market in years.
Although it also grows its own wheat, Egypt still needs huge
quantities of foreign wheat with higher gluten content to make flour suitable
for subsidized bread.
Abu Shadi ordered the purchase of 300,000 tonnes of
Romanian, Ukrainian, and Russian wheat on Thursday, his second day in office.
It dwarfed a July 2 tender of 180,000 tonnes ordered by his Morsi-era
predecessor Ouda.
Mamdouh Abdel Fattah, who managed Thursday's purchase, said
days after Morsi's overthrow this month that Egypt was unlikely to buy wheat
from abroad any time soon.
Fattah is the vice chairman of the state grain buying
agency, the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC). The agency
typically announces tenders the night before they occur.
The 300,000-tonne purchase was the new minister's first step
to boost dwindling stocks of imported wheat that Ouda told Reuters on July 11
were only enough to last for two months.
Morsi's ousted government had said it would purchase 4
million to 5 million tonnes of local wheat but had only bought 3.7 million
tonnes of home-grown wheat during the harvest which ended last month.
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