Supply Minister Khaled Hanafy confirmed that the ministry has rejected Blumberg Grain’s proposal for phase two of a grain storage and logistics project that would have seen the development of 300 shounas at a cost of USD 120 mn. While he did not give a reason for the rejection, Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, head of the Supply Ministry’s General Company for Silos and Storage, said earlier this week that project would have been too costly. As for phase one not being operational, Abdel Aziz tells Al Borsa that the control systems for have not been hooked up yet but did not comment on power supplies to the shounas, which Blumberg had been saying for the past week was the actual cause. The issue had been a source strain between the Supply Ministry and the company, as the shounas — designed to eliminate wastage and prevent “leakage” from the storage system — were supposed to be operational by the wheat harvest collection season. Al Borsa reported yesterday that the company wants the Armed Forces to take charge of the program instead of the Supply Ministry.

As for the scandal centered on this season’s harvest, Egypt may have collected as little as 3.6 mn tonnes of wheat, not 4.8 mn tonnes as reported previously by Hanafy, said Yasser Omar, member of the House of Representatives committee investigating the issue. The committee discovered another EGP 173 mn in “missing” wheat at a shouna on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road. This would bring the total wheat missing from the nine shounas inspected by the committee to EGP 407 mn, with another EGP 631 mn tallied by other government bodies investigating discrepancies between the state count and quantities actually in storage. Omar tells Al Shorouk that the committee’s report will back Blumberg’s request to have the Engineering Authority manage the program.