Saudi Arabia expects to import 1.9 million tons of wheat in 2011, the director general of the state-run Grain Silos and Flour Mills Organization (GSFMO) said Wednesday. “Around 1.9 million tons this year and slightly more next year,” Waleed Al-Khereiji told reporters on the sidelines of a Russian grain conference in Egypt. The increase in imports is due to an increase in consumption and a decrease in local purchases. “Consumption is increasing due to the increase in population and due to the decrease of procurement from the interior market,” Al-Khereiji said. In its latest wheat tender, Saudi Arabia bought 660,000 tons of wheat from Australia, the EU, Canada and the United States for shipment between November 2011 and February 2012, the GSFMO said Sunday. Saudi Arabia also plans to increase wheat storage capacity to 3.2 million tons, enough to cover its annual wheat consumption. “We have some projects now to add 710,000 tons,” Al-Khereiji said during his presentation at the conference. “If we complete all these projects we will have a one-year reserve storage capacity,” he said. Work is underway to construct new silos, some of which are at main Saudi ports, he said. The Kingdom's storage capacity is currently 2.5 million tons. Only two percent of Saudi Arabia's wheat imports in the period from 2008 to 2011 came from Russia while 40 percent was imported from Canada in the same period. “We don't select countries, we select wheat quality; so we have specifications (and) whoever meets them with the right prices, we will welcome him in our tenders,” Al-Khereiji said. Saudi Arabia, which consumes about 2.9 million tons of wheat annually, plans to totally depend on wheat imports by the year 2016 to save water. Local wheat procurement for 2011 is set at 1.75 million tons, according to a presentation distributed at the conference.
