The government has tapped the Military Production Ministry with managing the smart card platform for bread and food rations, stripping responsibility from the Supplies Ministry. The shift is to speed up the process of generating the new cards, replacing lost and damaged ones, and improving the overall efficiency of the system, according to a government statement. Supplies Minister Khaled Hanafy also said the Military Production Ministry will be tasked with data protection under the new agreement. Reuters’ Eric Knecht had broken news back in March that hackers managed to infiltrate the Supplies Ministry’s smart card system and the Ministry is already under investigation, having been accused by parliament members of squandering nearly EGP 14 bn.

Meanwhile, 25 UAE-funded wheat silos have been completed and will begin trial runs soon, Hanafy said yesterday, adding that the USD 575 mn project will be used during next harvest season. The ministry is constructing 14 new silos with funding from Saudi Arabia and 10 silos financed by the Italian government, which should be operational by mid-2017, said the minister. Hanafy did not mention the progress of renewed talks with Blumberg Grain over phase two of its program to develop 300 new shounas, which Hanafy had previously rejected. Blumberg Grain increasingly appears to be a sore subject for the minister, ever since he was publicly chastised by the House for not deploying its phase one shounas, designed to flag fraud in wheat storage.