{"id":284383,"date":"2019-08-17T16:15:01","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T20:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CBMid2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmV6ZWdhLmNvbS9OZXdzL05ld3NEZXRhaWxzLzcyMDMvRXRoaW9waWEtdG8tSW1wb3J0LUZvdXItTWlsbGlvbi1RdWludGFscy1vZi1XaGVhdC10by1FYXNlLVNvYXJpbmctSW5mbGF0aW9u0gEA?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-10-20T11:18:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T15:18:42","slug":"ethiopia-wheat-import-food-inflation-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/284383","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia planned to import 4 million quintals of wheat in 2019 as food inflation passed 20 percent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethiopia planned to import four million quintals of wheat by early September 2019 to ease food prices after food inflation reached 20.1 percent in July, a finance ministry official said.<\/p>\n

\"Children<\/figure>\n

Children beside a wheat field outside Korem in northern Ethiopia, photographed on May 8, 2013. (Adam Jones \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/p>\n

Haji Ibsaa, public relations director of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation, told journalists on Aug. 17, 2019 that prices of food items, mainly wheat and other grains, had soared since June, Ezega reported. A quintal is 100 kilograms, so the planned purchase amounted to about 400,000 tonnes.<\/p>\n

Food inflation stood at 19.6 percent in June and 20.1 percent in July, he said, and prices of cooking oil and sugar had also risen. He blamed security problems and a fall in productivity linked to them.<\/p>\n

About 1.5 million quintals of the wheat had already reached the port of Djibouti and would be distributed before the end of August, he said.<\/p>\n

Headline inflation rose to 15.6 percent in July, its highest level in five years, according to the Central Statistical Agency\u2019s consumer price index, Ezega said. Ethiopia was spending about $1 billion a year on wheat and fertilizer imports, the site reported.<\/p>\n

Three months earlier, the agriculture ministry had announced plans to end wheat imports through mechanized farming and irrigation by small-scale farmers. Officials cited shortages of fertilizer, improved seeds and pesticides as obstacles, and the country expected a harvest of 374 million quintals of major crops that season.<\/p>\n

The finance ministry said the same day that it had collected 326 billion birr in tax and non-tax revenue in the budget year that ended July 7, 2019, or 85 percent of its target.<\/p>\n

The government removed bread subsidies and stopped international wheat purchases in 2023, but private imports continued to cover shortfalls, the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s Foreign Agricultural Service said in a May 2025 report. Ethiopia imported about 810,000 tonnes of wheat grain worth $344 million in the 2023\/24 marketing year, more than 80 percent of it from Russia, the report said.<\/p>\n

The agency forecast Ethiopian wheat production of 6.5 million tonnes in 2025\/26 and imports falling 24 percent to 1.3 million tonnes.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong> Ezega (Aug. 17, 2019)<\/a>, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service: Ethiopia Grain and Feed Annual (May 7, 2025)<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethiopia planned to import four million quintals of wheat by early September 2019 to ease food prices after food inflation reached 20.1 percent in July, a finance ministry official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":838011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7911,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/wheat-field-korem-ethiopia-2013.jpg?fit=1280%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1bYP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838017,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284383\/revisions\/838017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}