Egypt is losing an annual LE2 billion due to poor handling and storage of wheat, accoridng to Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Ayman Farid Abu Hadid.
Abu Hadid has claimed failure to store wheat properly hampers Egypt's abiility to reach crop-growing self-sufficiency.
The minister told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Thursday that the Cabinet has an ambitious plan to solve this problem by encouraging national and Arab investment to establish new silos that increase the storage capacity of wheat to six million tonnes instead of four.
The poor standards affect wheat during transportation, storage and marketing.
Egypt usually imports about 10 million tonnes of wheat annually from international markets and uses a mix of local and imported wheat for the subsidized bread upon which millions of Egyptians depend.
