Syria's state grain buyer has signed contracts with local traders for 1.2 million tonnes of Russian wheat, a government source said, the country's second attempt at a huge wheat deal since October as it tries to secure supplies of the food staple.
Syria's state grain buyer has signed contracts with local traders for 1.2 million tonnes of Russian wheat, a government source said, the country's second attempt at a huge wheat deal since October as it tries to secure supplies of the food staple.
"We have signed six contracts each for 200,000 tonnes. These are local firms who will source the Russian wheat for us," the government source close to the deal told Reuters, declining to name the firms involved.
The government has allocated 52 billion Syrian pounds ($101 million) for a portion of the deals, the source said.
Flat bread is a subsidised staple for Syrians, who have suffered under a conflict estimated to have killed several hundred thousand people and forced millions to flee their homes.
Syria's state buyer, the General Establishment for Cereal Processing and Trade (Hoboob), had struck a deal in October to buy one million tonnes of wheat from its ally Russia to feed government held areas and prevent bread shortages after a sharp drop in the country's wheat production last season.
"This new arrangement doesn't cancel out the previous deal, we are still trying to get procedures moving for that one," the source said.
The October deal, struck with a little known firm called Zernomir, has so far not been fulfilled and may never be, according to Syrian and Russian government sources.
President Bashar al-Assad's government managed to collect only around 400,000 tonnes of the 1.3 million tonnes of wheat that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimated Syria produced last year.
($1 = 515.0000 Syrian pounds)
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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