State grain buyer the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) received seven bid in its first wheat tender of the year following additional negotiations that contractual issues will be amended, the head of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR), Dmitry Rylko, told Interfax. “The difficulty arose from Egypt's attempt to begin enforcing a little-used rule. ‘Recently GASC found in its documents a rule under which it has the right to charge supplying companies demurrage fees,’ Rylko said. ‘The suppliers were informed of this two days ago,’ he said, adding that the rule was to be applied to all demurrage instances retroactively to the beginning of the current agricultural year, that is, July 2017. ‘There were quite a lot of them,’ he said.” Initial media reports suggested that no bids were received, but after resolving the issues, seven companies presented bids, Rylko says.

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