Middle East to suffer from the grain shortage: Russian attack disrupts Ukraine's supply chain
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is endangering more than only the lives of Ukrainians.The war is also on course to generate a worldwide increase in severe hunger and even starvation.If the battle in Ukraine continues for several weeks longer, Ukrainians will be unable to plant wheat, while Western sanctions will prevent Russia from selling its produce.As a result, grain prices will continue to climb sharply, generating sharp price increases in bread, milk, meat, and other goods. Lebanon gets 81 percent of its national wheat consumption from Ukraine and 15 percent from Russia, according to figures from the FAO's 2020 balance sheet. Egypt imports 60 percent of its wheat from Russia and 25 percent from Ukraine.Egypt is scrambling to locate alternative wheat supplies after Russia's invasion of Ukraine placed the country's supply in peril.Because the country imported nearly 85% of the wheat it required last year from Russia and Ukraine, Abdel Fattah al-government Sisi's will need to find alternate sources of supply as soon as possible. The Egyptian government had to cancel an international tender for the supply of wheat from France last week because only one tender was received, rather than the statutory minimum of two, and Cairo hastened to call a new tender 48 hours later. Bread subsidies are considered a red line among Egyptians and people in other countries in the Middle East, as they are a staple for every family in the region. Bread is sold at very low prices, for example, a subsidized flat loaf costs 0.05 Egyptian pounds, less than one US cent, which covers only a small part of the real cost of producing it and the government coffers cover the rest. Lebanon is facing a huge problem with grain supplies, as it imports more than 80 per cent of the grain it needs from the Black Sea and does not have a strategic stockpile of grains due to the enormous explosion in the port of Beirut in August 2020 which destroyed its only large grain silo. Moreover, the approximately 5 million refugees hosted in Turkey have bread as their main food. All this is coupled with the fact that Turkey is a major producer of pasta, flour, biscuits and semolina. Turkey is now a key player in the international wheat market, as its grain imports have increase to record levels.In 2021, Turkey imported 64.6 percent of its wheat from Russia and 13.4 per cent from Ukraine.