Egypt is looking to import large quantities of rice this month “as farmers refuse to sell the government their crops despite a plentiful harvest and an extreme shortage of [USD] that should make buying from abroad a last resort,” Reuters’ Eric Knecht and Maha El Dahan write. Farmers are claiming that the EGP 2,400 per tonne the government is offering for their crop is too low. “Farmers don’t want to sell because in the previous years they saw that they sold cheaply and then prices increased and they didn’t profit,” said Mostafa al-Naggari, head of the rice committee of Egypt’s agricultural export council, adding that the free market price is around EGP 2,900 a tonne. A trader says farmers sold the crop cheaply last year and traders “made a lot of money,” so, keeping in mind what happened last year, they are willing to store it. The government, which issued a tender to import rice, might be moving tactically, traders say; “ a shot across the bow to farmers holding stocks in hopes that they will release them to the market.”

On a related note, GASC postponed a global tender yesterday to buy 100k tons of white rice on the grounds that suppliers needed more time to collect necessary documents for the tender, Al Masry Al Youm reported. The tender is now set to take place next Monday.