Summary
A global grain glut should make purchasing wheat cheap and easy for Egypt, the world's biggest importer, but traders say one bureaucrat has made it anything but.
Officials at Moussa's quarantine authority use a 2001 regulation, which Reuters has seen, stipulating zero tolerance for ergot as their main guide, according to a quarantine official who declined to be named. They first used the rule to reject a wheat shipment in December.
Panic began to spread among traders after a 63,000-tonne French wheat shipment purchased by GASC was rejected by the quarantine agency in December for containing trace levels of ergot.
That should have created ideal conditions for Egypt to buy wheat at great prices.
Egypt will announce the results of its latest tender for an unspecified amount of wheat from global suppliers for shipment from April 5-14 after 3:30 p.m. local time (1330 GMT) Wednesday.
Hanafi said Friday that Egypt has enough wheat supplies to last until the middle of June.
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