The Egyptian Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade, contracted with Russia to purchase an additional 600,000 tons of Russian wheat, the Egyptian General Authority for Supply Commodities said in a statement, Thursday.
Egypt will receive 600,000 tons of wheat from Russia, 300,000 tons of which will be shipped between May 10 and 20.
The remaining 300,000 tons will be shipped between May 21 and 31.
Russia has provided Egypt during the past months with a huge amount of wheat, despite US and European sanctions and despite the Ukrainian war.
On January 11, Russia issued a statement confirming that, despite the New Year holidays, it continued to ship grain to various countries of the world, including Egypt.
Exports increased to Egypt from January 1 to January 8, it added.
The volume of Russian wheat exports doubled to 963,000 tons, compared to 480,000 tons for the same period in 2022.
Corn exports also increased by 27 percent reaching 44,500 tons, the director of the analytics department of the Russian Grain Union (RGU), Elena Tyurina, said.
According to Tyurina, Egypt received the highest amount of Russian wheat among importing countries in January, as it received 191,500 tons of Russian wheat from January 1 to 8, 2023, compared to 103,000 tons in 2021.
Early in January, 132,000 tons of Russian grains were exported to Pakistan and to Algeria, she added.
Tyurina said that the new buyers of Russian wheat in 2023 were the Sultanate of Oman, Kenya, Tanzania and Qatar, which received no shipments of Russian wheat in January 2021.
She explained that the top importers from Russia are Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Oman, Kenya, Tanzania and Israel.
On January 22, Egypt announced that Damietta Port received the Ship OXANA V coming from Russia carrying 42,000 tons of wheat.
On February 3, the General Authority for Supply Commodities in Egypt contracted for 535,000 tons of Russian wheat, funded by the World Bank.
Earlier, Egypt announced that the Egyptian port of Safaga had received the ship PAREA, loaded with 63,000 tons of Russian wheat.
