Formerly NE North Dakota, now NW MN | 1234 - 2/17/2016 07:36
This looks like a setup to steer the business to some other supplier at a higher price.
It looks like something way more sinister than that. Egypt is broke. They have no incentive to steer business somewhere else only to pay a higher price. Either someone has risen to a position in the Ag. ministry and is just genuinely stupid, or (more likely) someone has embarked on a deliberate scheme to control Egypt's food supply, likely for nefarious political reasons.
I don't blame a country, even one direly dependent on imports like Egypt, for having import standards and rejecting cargoes they view to be unfit. But when they create standards, not based on science, and totally in-congruent with what the rest of the global grain trade does, and then keeps moving the standards all over the place and being very unclear about what they are doing or what's going on, they are just asking for trouble.
Last time they rejected wheat loads with questionable grounds for rejection the worlds grain cartel (including, presumably, Russian grain sellers) put them on notice. No one, not one, gave them an offer next time they tendered. Furthermore, there's no doubt in my mind the offers their getting are now more expensive to compensate for the added risk of going into there.
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Egypt rejects Canadian wheat shipment
