BAGHDAD: Iraq’s new grain board chief said on Tuesday he expected local wheat production at no less than 2.5 million tonnes in the 2018 season, an improvement over previous forecasts on the back of recent rainfall.
Iraq had said in February it expected wheat and barley production to drop by around 20 percent from 2017 due to dry weather.
Iraq needs an annual wheat supply of between 4.5 million and five million tonnes, implying an import gap of around two million tonnes for the year.
“There are areas that have also now been added to our local purchasing plan like Mosul and Anbar which will fill any dips in production if they happen,” Maksousi said.
Iraq lost production from Nineveh, its most fertile province of which Mosul is the capital, after Islamic State took control.
However, the government declared victory over Islamic State in December, having taken back all territory the militants captured in 2014 and 2015.
Maksousi has been acting head of the state grain buying agency responsible for the bulk of the country’s wheat and rice imports for around a month after the previous chief, Haitham al-Khishali, left to a more senior position at the trade ministry.
The grain board, which falls under the trade ministry, regularly announces international purchasing tenders, to import wheat for the country’s food rationing programme, which covers flour, cooking oil, rice, sugar and baby milk formula and was created in 1991 to combat U.N. economic sanctions.
Under the system, imported wheat is mixed with local grain to produce flour. Impoverished Iraqis continue to depend on the system, which has become corrupt and wasteful over the years.
The grain board buys wheat of U.S., Canadian and Australian origin, making it one of the few major grain purchasers in the region, alongside Saudi Arabia, that has so far resisted cheaper Russian and Black Sea origins.
