Marrakesh: Morocco, North Africa's third- largest wheat buyer, imported 1.72 million metric tonnes of cereals in the five months through May, state grain buyer ONICL said.
A further 583,100 tonnes of grain that had been bought remained to be received by the end of last month, the Rabat-based Office Nationale Interprofessionel des Cereales et des Legumineuses said in a statement on its website yesterday.
Egypt and Algeria are the only North African nations that import more wheat than Morocco, based on International Grains Council data. Inbound shipments of the grain into Morocco came to 2.16 million tonnes of wheat in the 2009-10 season and 3.6 million tonnes in the previous year, ONICL statistics show. Moroccan soft-wheat purchases until the end of October amounted to 1.2 million tonnes, of which 766,000 tonnes had been imported. The country also bought 780,400 tonnes of corn, of which 648,600 tonnes had been shipped, the grain buyer said.
France was the biggest provider of soft wheat to Morocco from June 1 to October 31, accounting for 590,300 tonnes of imports of the grain, or 77 per cent, the report showed.
For corn, Argentina accounted for 227,400 tonnes of imports and the US for 127,500 tonnes, while 293,600 tonnes was shipped from unidentified destinations, ONICL said. Morocco also bought 169,500 tonnes of Canadian durum wheat in the period and 124,100 tonnes of barley, mostly from France.
