Egypt’s GASC cancels wheat tender as offers jump $30/mt

Egypt’s state grain buyer cancelled a tender to import milling wheat for February 18-March 5 shipment as traders pulled back from the market and the average offer jumped almost $30/mt compared to its previous tender last month.

General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) received just four offers at Tuesday’s tender.

Ameropa offered 60,000 mt of Romanian wheat at $292.97/mt FOB, French offers came from Viterra and Soufflet at $293.86/mt and $297.75/mt, and AST offered Russian wheat at $315/mt FOB.

Average offers were at $299.78/mt FOB, up $29.88/mt compared to the average price GASC paid for 235,000 mt of Romanian and Ukrainian wheat at its previous tender on December 15.

Offers for Russian wheat, which have dominated GASC tenders in the current marketing year, jumped the most as the trade priced in an export tax of €25/mt set to come into force next month.

That was bolstered by rumours the Russian government could lift that duty further to slow domestic food price inflation.

With Tuesday’s tender skipped, GASC has bought 3.6 million mt of wheat since the start of the 2020/21 marketing year, according to the Agricensus Tender Dashboard.

That is down 23% compared to the same period of last year.

Egypt will import 13 million mt in the 2020/21 marketing year and GASC will buy more than half of this volume, according to the USDA forecast.