Bangladesh’s state grains buyer has cancelled a tender to import 50,000 tonnes of wheat, citing higher prices, a senior procurement official said Wednesday.
A domestic trader made the lowest offer of $286.77 a tonne, including CIF liner out, in the tender, which was the third for the current fiscal year that began in July.
The offer was high considering global wheat prices and the firm was also not able to submit proper documents, the official at Directorate General of Food, the state agency, said.
The second highest offer was $291.95, which was submitted by South Korea’s Daewoo International Corp.
Another domestic firm has secured previous two tenders to supply a total of 100,000 tonnes of wheat by offering lowest bids of $282.66 a tonne and $288.26 a tonne.
Two more tenders are in the process, with one is due to open on October 1 and another on October 8.
The imports are part of a plan by the Directorate General of Food to ship in 850,000 tonnes of wheat in the current financial year, up from about 350,000 tonnes the previous year. The state agency could not achieve last financial year’s import target of 800,000 tonnes mainly because of supply failure by traders.That has prompted it to introduce tougher delivery rules to ensure supplies are delivered on time by the winning bidder.
Bangladesh’s government is buying 200,000 tonnes of wheat from Ukraine at $307 a tonne CIF liner out amid a drop in government reserves, which have fallen to around 1m tonnes now from 1.4m tonnes a year earlier.
Apart from the government, private traders also import about 2.5m tonnes of wheat a year to help meet local demand of 4m tonnes. Domestic output amounts to about 1m tonnes.