Egypt's main wheat-buying agency, the General Authority for Supply Commodities, set a tender on Monday to buy an unspecified amount of wheat from global suppliers for shipment 20-31 December, its fifth international tender in less than a month.
Mamdouh Abdel Fattah, vice chairman of GASC, one of the world's biggest state importers of wheat, is seeking to buy cargoes of soft and/or milling wheat from the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Poland, Argentina, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Romania.
Tenders should reach GASC by noon local time (1000 GMT) on Tuesday and the results should come out after 3:30pm (1330 GMT) on the same day. Wheat bids should be free-on-board, with a separate freight offer.
GASC is seeking to buy 55,000- to 60,000-tonne cargoes of the following:
* U.S. North Pacific soft white wheat
* U.S. soft red winter wheat
* Ukrainian milling wheat
* Australian standard white wheat
and 60,000-tonne cargoes of the following:
* Canadian soft wheat
* French milling wheat
* German milling wheat
* Argentine bread wheat
* Polish milling wheat
* Russian milling wheat
* Kazakh milling wheat
* Romanian milling wheat
GASC has bought only EU and Black Sea region wheat since returning to the international market in July following a 4-1/2 month absence.
In its last international tender on 27 November, GASC bought 60,000 tonnes of French wheat for 16-31 December shipment.
Egypt usually imports around 10 million tonnes of wheat per year from international markets and uses a mixture of domestic and imported wheat for its subsidized bread program, which feeds millions of people.
GASC purchases account for about 5 million to 5.5 million tonnes of that total.
