Egypt to begin rice importation

Egypt will begin importing rice to increase stocks and “control the market,” Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said on Tuesday, months after a campaign to cut local production.

Egypt’s rice is a crop it has typically had in surplus.

Egypt this year slashed cultivation of rice, a water-intensive crop, to conserve vital Nile river resources.

It took this stance as Ethiopia prepares to fill the reservoir behind a colossal four billion dollars dam it is building upstream and which Cairo worries could threaten its water stocks.

“Necessary steps will be taken to increase the rice on offer in order to control the market and prevent any bottlenecks in the coming period,” Ismail told reporters after a ministerial meeting.

He did not specify the quantity or timing of the expected imports, but his comments are the first suggesting Egypt would begin an import programme since sharply reducing its own production.

Cairo earlier this year increased fines for illegal rice cultivation and decreed that just 724,000 feddans (750,000 acres) can be planted.

This is a sharp drop from the officially allotted 1.1 million feddans last year and the 1.8 million feddans grains traders believe were actually grown.

Rice traders have said that the new policies would push Egypt to import up to one million tonnes of the grain next year.

The importation is arising after decades of Egypt being an exporter of a medium grain variety prized in Arab markets.

Ismail said necessary quantities of rice of the same quality as Egyptian white rice would be imported to prevent any bottlenecks in the coming period.