Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Egypt's government complicit in wheat corruption - parliamentary report

Latest: Corruption and Money Laundering.

Egypt's government complicit in wheat corruption - parliamentary report.




By Eric Knecht and Maha El Dahan | CAIRO/ABU DHABI

A farmer harvests wheat on Qalyub farm in the
El-Kalubia governorate, northeast of Cairo,
 
Egypt May 1, 2016. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
A parliamentary fact-finding commission's report into corruption in Egypt's wheat industry finds that the government played a key role in "wasting public funds" in its costly food subsidy programme. 
Reuters reviewed a copy of the report that will be presented in parliament on Monday. It states that government entities neglected their own storage facilities in favour of less regulated private sites, made contracts with "fake entities," and oversaw flawed reforms that caused subsidy spending to increase rather than decrease as publicly stated.
From silo contracts to budgetary analysis to testimony from industry officials, the more than 500-page fact-finding report into wheat corruption points to government involvement in mismanaging, and at times facilitating graft in, subsidies intended to encourage agriculture and feed tens of millions.
"There are obvious flaws that rise to the level of complicity in the supply ministry and all of its bodies supervising the wheat procurement system," the report said.
The supply ministry spokesman said he had resigned from his post and could no longer comment on the issue when contacted by Reuters.
Egypt, the world's largest importer of wheat, has been mired in controversy in recent months over whether much of the roughly 5 million tonnes of grain the government said it procured in this harvest exists only on paper, the result of local suppliers falsifying receipts to boost government payments.

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