Insights and Stories of Eric Knecht

Aug. 31, 2016 at 7:56 pm CDT

Cairo/Abu Dhabi | Reuters — Egypt’s ability to buy wheat from abroad while demanding zero ergot fungus in shipments was dealt a serious blow on Wednesday, with state grain buyer GASC cancelling its tender after receiving just one offer. It was the country’s first tender to purchase wheat since it […]

By Eric Knecht, maha-el-dahan

Aug. 29, 2016 at 7:09 pm CDT

Cairo/Abu Dhabi | Reuters — Egypt reinstated on Sunday a controversial ban on wheat shipments containing even the slightest amount of a common grain fungus, baffling traders who had returned to the Egyptian market just last month when the ban was lifted. The world’s largest wheat importer said on Sunday […]

By Eric Knecht, maha-el-dahan

Aug. 25, 2016 at 2:01 pm CDT

Cairo/Abu Dhabi | Reuters — Egypt’s Minister of Supply Khaled Hanafi has resigned amid the highest-profile corruption case since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2014. Hanafi’s resignation is the most senior-level fallout from a probe into whether millions of dollars intended to subsidize farmers were used to […]

By Eric Knecht, maha-el-dahan

Jun. 8, 2016 at 2:00 pm CDT

Abu Dhabi/Cairo | Reuters — Egypt has rejected two shipments of wheat for containing trace levels of the ergot fungus, backtracking on a government pledge to apply international standards and alarming traders looking to do business with the world’s largest buyer of the grain. Earlier this year traders boycotted state […]

By Eric Knecht, maha-el-dahan

Jan. 27, 2016 at 2:34 am CST

Reuters — One Egyptian official’s tough stance on wheat imports carrying a fungus that wreaked havoc in the Middle Ages is baffling global grain traders and putting a spotlight on policy-making disarray in the world’s biggest purchaser of the commodity. Alarm bells began ringing in Egypt when a 63,000-tonne wheat […]

By Eric Knecht, maha-el-dahan