Morocco Opens Tender to Stockpile Grain

Rabat – Morocco’s National Interprofessional Office for Cereals and Legumes (ONICL) launched a tender on Wednesday for grain suppliers to secure Morocco’s stock of cereals.

ONICL will open the bids for tender on May 17.

With this bid, ONICL aims to secure three million quintals of soft wheat and one million quintals of wheat, according to an official statement.

The new provision is likely to cover Morocco’s grain needs for two months. Suppliers wishing to win the bid must be able to supply the required amount of wheat by May 31, the official statement said.

The opening of the tender comes at a time when grain prices are soaring internationally because of the Ukraine war.

In Morocco, wheat is a staple of the national diet, and prices are strictly managed by a special committee to protect national consumer purchasing power.

ONICL constantly monitors prices to keep bread wheat prices within a $260/MT and $280/MT price range.

This year, Morocco’s wheat production is at a record low as drought ravaged the country’s Autumn and Winter wheat crops.

Wheat and barley yields fell sharply in the 2022-2023 agriculture season, 70% less than last year, according to a report from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

Land relegated to harvesting barley and wheat has shrunk by 15% over the same period.

The sub-optimal agriculture season is set to worsen the country’s dependency on wheat imports.

Morocco’s grain imports will likely reach 6 million metric tons (MMT) in 2022, up by 10% from last year.

In March, Morocco had 3.6 MT of wheat in reserves, an estimated three months of reserves.

In an attempt to increase the wheat supply in the country, the Moroccan government had rolled out a number of measures including suspending taxes on wheat imports, as well as launching a support program for farmers.

The program covers the distribution of 700,000 MT barely at a price of $200 per ton to farmers in addition to providing 400,000 MT of compound feed to farmers to mitigate the soaring cost of animal feed.