LONDON/ABU DHABI: Iraq’s trade minister said yesterday the country does not import wheat from neighbouring Syria as the produce was not high enough quality, describing sales efforts by Damascus as a political move to “make some problems” for Baghdad.
Earlier yesterday, a source with Syria’s state cereal body, the General Establishment for Processing and Trade (Hoboob), said it had sold 200,000 tonnes of wheat to neighbouring Iraq in a tender.
War and drought have cut Syria’s wheat crop forecast to between one million and 1.7 million tonnes, agricultural experts and traders say. Before the conflict, Syria typically produced around 3.5 million tonnes a year.
Iraq’s trade minister Khairullah Hasan Babakir said Iraq required a gluten content of above 28 percent, which was higher than Syria’s wheat content.
“We cannot receive from Syria,” he said on the sidelines of a grains conference in London. “This is only a political issue: they want to make some problems for Iraq,” he said.
The Hoboob source could not be immediately reached for further comment. Syria launched a tender for a second time last month to sell wheat to Iraq from its Hassaka region. It is selling Syrian wheat from its 2013 crop.
Iraq’s Babakir said it imported high quality wheat especially from Australia, Canada and the United States.
He said Iraq expected wheat production to rise to 4.2 million tonnes in 2014, reflecting government support for farmers, adding that it expected to export about 1 million tonnes.
AFP
