The official Middle East News Agency quoted the Egyptian Minister of Supply as saying that Egypt has a strategic stockpile of wheat that is sufficient until the end of January.
He added, “We have a strategic stockpile until the end of January as a strategic reserve of wheat, meaning we have more than six to nine months.”
The war in Ukraine has raised concerns about wheat supplies in Arab countries, especially in North Africa, where there is a vast difference between production and consumption.
According to official reports by Arab statistics agencies, this gap amounted to about 50 million tons in the 2020-2021 agricultural season.
About 50 days after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, wheat prices jumped, which reached their highest level in 9 years, as the May futures contracts exceeded $438 per ton, which is twice the estimates of the price of wheat in the budgets of importing countries, especially Arab countries.
The rise in wheat prices ignites the prices of other foodstuffs such as bread and semolina, and thus feeds the already high inflation rates in those countries that import about 60 percent of raw materials.
According to the latest data, Arab countries in general account for 25 percent of global wheat exports, and import 60 percent of their total needs from Russia and Ukraine, given their low price in the two countries, an advantage that the war eliminated with the two countries banning their grain exports.
Russia and Ukraine account for 30% of the world’s wheat supply, Russia is the largest exporter in the world and Ukraine is among the top 5 exporter countries, and according to data “S&P Global Platts”, it was expected that Russia and Ukraine together would export 60 million tons of wheat in 2021 -2022.
It is worth noting that in 2021, Russia produced 121 million tons of grain, including 76 million tons of wheat.
Before the war, Russia’s harvest in 2022 was estimated at 125-130 million tons, including 80-83 million tons of wheat.
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