Russia may ban Egyptian citrus amid wheat dispute

MOSCOW / Reuters

Russia threatened to ban Egyptian citrus imports on Tuesday, a move that could escalate a trade dispute over exports of Russian wheat to the world’s largest importer of the grain. Moscow said this week it hopes to hold talks with Egypt, its top buyer, over Cairo’s failure to approve Russian wheat shipments since tightening its regulations on ergot, a common grains fungus, in late August.
Several cargoes suspected of containing trace levels of the fungus have since been held at Russian ports, awaiting a decision from Cairo over whether to allow them to pass under the old rule, traders said. Zero tolerance on ergot could halt Russian wheat exports to Egypt at a time when the country has its largest wheat crop in post-Soviet history.
Egypt’s state grain buyer GASC purchased 540,000 tonnes of the grain from Russia since July before tightening its import restrictions on ergot, banning the fungus entirely and saying the new rule would apply retroactively, affecting hundreds of thousands of tonnes yet to be shipped.
The sales were originally agreed to under a rule allowing 0.05 percent ergot, a common international standard. Russian wheat export prices fell last week, partly due to delayed supplies to Egypt, and are expected to remain under pressure until the situation is resolved, traders said.
Egypt bought 6mn tonnes of Russian wheat in the 2015-16 marketing year, which ended on June 30, a quarter of Moscow’s total wheat exports for the period. Russia’s food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said on Tuesday it was concerned about the “systematic breach of international and phytosanitary requirements” in “massive supplies” of Egyptian citrus fruit set for export to Russia.