ABU DHABI: War-torn Syria’s state wheat import deals surged to 2.4 million tonnes in 2013 from 550,000 a year earlier, the country’s General Establishment for Cereal Processing and Trade (Hoboob) said yesterday.
Syria suffered its worst wheat harvest in nearly three decades in 2013 as war and sanctions continued to put pressure on the government to import food. The imported wheat was mostly of Black Sea origin and deals were done outside the tender process and paid through unlocked funds in frozen Syrian international bank accounts, a source at Hoboob said.
“Of the total quantity, 1.7 million tonnes arrived in Syria and the remaining quantity is on its way,” the source said. Hoboob said in October it had struck deals with payment using frozen funds to import 500,000 tonnes of wheat from France and the Black Sea over the summer. Although some traders were sceptical about the 2013 wheat import figure, others said the jump in imports was in line with the government’s drive to bolster imports given the record-low local harvest.
“Syrian agriculture has been hugely disrupted by the fighting and this will have greatly increased their import requirements. Importing has also been concentrated in state hands as private buyers have been kept out of the market by sanctions,” he said.
Estimates collated by Reuters from local traders in July suggested the local harvest could have been as low as 1.5 million tonnes. Sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and other countries on President Bashar Al Assad’s government do not apply to food but the financing freeze has hindered Syria’s ability to seal import deals.
Syria started asking to pay for its food by freeing some of its frozen assets in international banks in mid-2013 but some international traders said the payment method was not attractive as the seller bore the burden of obtaining the necessary approvals to unlock the funds.
Reuters
