Tunisia expects a wheat harvest of almost 2 million tonnes this year due to more rain than in 2010, reducing the need for imports, Agriculture Minister Mokhtar Jallali said on April 18.
Tunisia has enough wheat stocks to last until July, he told a news conference.
"The wheat harvest will be good this year," Jallali said. "This will allow us to save 400 million dinars on imports of cereals this season," he said.
Tunisia, which has large areas of arid land, has to import much of the grain that its population of 10 million consumes. It imports mainly soft wheat and barley as it has a policy to allocate most of its fertile and irrigated land to growing durum wheat.
In August last year, an Agriculture Ministry official said the North African country would import around 2 million tonnes of grain this year to make up for a shortfall in the 2010 crop.
Reuters
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