Egypt's General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) set a tender on Thursday to buy an unspecified amount of wheat from global suppliers for shipment from September 26 to October 5. Ahmed Youssef, vice chairman of GASC, said the authority is seeking to buy cargoes of soft and/or milling wheat from the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Poland, Argentina, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria.
Tenders should reach GASC by noon local time (1000 GMT) on Friday. The results should come out after 3:30 pm on the same day. Wheat bids should be free-on-board, with a separate freight offer.
GASC cancelled its previous international wheat tender on August 23 without giving any reason. That tender sought wheat for September 21-30.
Earlier on Thursday, Egypt's Minister of Supply Khaled Hanafi resigned, the most senior-level fallout from a probe into whether millions of dollars intended to subsidise farmers were used to purchase domestic wheat that did not exist. Egypt's supply ministry is in charge of a massive food subsidy programme as well as GASC.