CAIRO: Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, has bought 170,000 tons of soft wheat from the United States, Australia and Argentina for March 21-31 shipment on a free-on-board basis, the main government wheat buyer said on Saturday. The most populous Arab nation returned to global markets after an absence of nearly a month to buy supplies of the grain at a time when an uprising is seeking the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Nomani Nomani, vice chairman of the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC), gave the following breakdown of the purchases from the US, Australia and Argentina, Another tender to purchase hard wheat for Apr. 1-10 shipment was cancelled, Nomani said without providing reasons. GASC last bought wheat on the global market on January 8, and that tender was the first since pro-democracy protests erupted on January 25. Cairo's announcement of the tender to purchase wheat comes after a spell of panic buying by restive North African and Middle Eastern countries in the wake of violent riots toppling the president of Tunisia, another major wheat importer. Egyptian Finance Minister Samir Radwan said earlier on Saturday that his ministry had allocated an extra LE 2.8 billion over the past two days to finance wheat purchases. Since the start of the 2010/11 fiscal year on July 1, GASC has purchased about 4.635 million tons of French, US, Canadian, Australian and Argentine wheat. In the fiscal year that ended on June 30, GASC purchased some 5.53 million tons of US, French, Russian, German, Kazakh and Canadian wheat at international tenders.
