There is good news for wheat exporters and farmers in India. Egypt has approved wheat import from India. One of the largest importers of wheat in the world, Egypt had been importing wheat from Russia and Ukraine so far. But it has not been able to do so since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war has also led to a decline in the availability of wheat in the global market. The prices of wheat have gone up by about 30 per cent in the international market since the war began.
This information was shared by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal in a tweet. He wrote that the “Indian farmers are feeding the world. Egypt approves India as a wheat supplier. Modi Govt. steps in as world looks for reliable alternate sources for steady food supply. Our farmers have ensured our granaries overflow & we are ready to serve the world.”
Egypt wants to import 10 lakh tonnes (lt) of wheat from India. It will require 2.4 lt in April. Egypt is one of the largest importers of wheat. In 2020, it had imported wheat worth $1.8bn from Russia and $610mn from Russia. In terms of quantity, it had imported a total of 1.2 crore tonnes of wheat, of which 80 per cent came from Russia and Ukraine. It imports wheat from 26 countries. India has been included in this list for the first time.
Wheat export from India has gone up by several times in the last financial year. During April-January of the financial year 2021-22, India exported wheat worth $1.74bn compared to a mere $340mn in the year-ago period. Only the neighbouring countries — Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka — had been the major importers of wheat from India so far. It is true that India is a major producer of wheat but a large part of its production goes for domestic consumption. India’s share is even less than 1 per cent in the world’s total wheat exports.
If exports are increasing on the one hand, the wheat stocks in the central pool have reached a three-year low on the other. Despite the higher procurement last year, the wheat stocks came down to 189.90 lt on 1 Apr 2022. These stood at 273 lt at the same time a year ago. However, the stocks are still about 2.5 times the buffer norms of 74.60 lt for the central pool on April 1. The government has set a target of procuring 444 lt of wheat in the current Rabi marketing season (April to June). Thanks to the demand in the international market, farmers at some of the places in India are also getting wheat prices above the Minimum Support Price (MSP).