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Thursday, April 25, 2024 23:40 GMT
The Government Trading Corporation (GTC) of Iran bought nearly 1.5 million tons of wheat from farmers in the country in the new harvesting season that started early April as authorities hope increased domestic crop could allay concerns about international supplies affected by the war in Ukraine. GTC’s CEO Saeid Rad said that the government is seeking to fast-track payments due to domestic growers to encourage more wheat delivery to government silos until the end of the harvesting season in late July, Press TV reported. Rad said more than IRR 92,710 trillion (~US$229 million) of payments has been made to wheat farmers in recent weeks to settle a bulk of the purchases hat have been carried out in recent weeks. Iran has nearly doubled the guaranteed purchase price for wheat to IRR 115,000 (~US$0.37) per kilogram this harvesting season.The government hopes the price could lead to increased domestic supplies this year as the country expects lower imports of wheat because of a war between Russia and Ukraine that has affected global supplies of grains. For years, Iran has covered wheat and several other crops in its guaranteed purchase price scheme. However, purchases have declined in recent years because of price issues causing some farmers to switch to other crops or to sell their produce to the middlemen.A new administrative government that took office in August has vowed it would expand contract farming to major crops to prevent price fluctuations in the market that are caused by lack of balance in supply and demand. Iran’s demand for wheat is expected to reach nearly 15 million tons this year. The country imported around eight million tons of the crop over the calendar year to March with a bulk of the supply coming from Russia. Rad said wheat purchases had started in eight Iranian provinces that are mostly located in south of the country where early harvest of the crop is possible because of the warmer weather. He said the province of Khuzestan on the southwestern border with Iraq had supplied 900,000 ton of wheat to the GTC silos over the past month. - Iran Daily