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"We
have signed six contracts each for 200,000 tonnes. These are
local firms who will source the Russian wheat for us," the
government source close to the deal told Reuters, declining to
name the firms involved.
The government has allocated 52 billion Syrian pounds ($101
million) for a portion of the deals, the source said.
Flat bread is a subsidized staple for Syrians, who have suffered
under a conflict estimated to have killed several hundred
thousand people and forced millions to flee their homes.
Syria's state buyer, the General Establishment for Cereal
Processing and Trade (Hoboob), had struck a deal in October to
buy one million tonnes of wheat from its ally Russia to feed
government held areas and prevent bread shortages after a sharp
drop in the country's wheat production last season.
"This new arrangement doesn't cancel out the previous deal, we
are still trying to get procedures moving for that one," the
source said.
The October deal, struck with a little known firm called
Zernomir, has so far not been fulfilled and may never be,
according to Syrian and Russian government sources.
President Bashar al-Assad's government managed to collect only
around 400,000 tonnes of the 1.3 million tonnes of wheat that
the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimated Syria
produced last year.
(Reporting by Maha El Dahan, writing by Gus Trompiz and Sybille
de La Hamaide. Editing by Jane Merriman and David Evans)
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