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Middle Eastern Countries on Brink of Wheat Crisis

The destroyed silo sits in rubble and debris after an explosion at the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, on August 5, 2020. (AP)
The destroyed silo sits in rubble and debris after an explosion at the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, on August 5, 2020. (AP)
    Cairo, Tunis and other capitals - Lamia Nabil, Mongi Saidani and Asharq Al-Awsat
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Middle Eastern Countries on Brink of Wheat Crisis

The destroyed silo sits in rubble and debris after an explosion at the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, on August 5, 2020. (AP)
The destroyed silo sits in rubble and debris after an explosion at the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, on August 5, 2020. (AP)

Since the eruption of the Russian-Ukrainian tensions, fears have emerged that the global wheat and grain markets will be severely affected, given that the two countries secure an important part of global exports.

Russia and Ukraine account for 29% of world wheat exports, 19% of corn exports, and 80% of global exports of sunflower oil.

Since the launch of Russia's invasion against Ukraine on Thursday, wheat prices on the Chicago Stock Exchange have risen to their highest level in nine and a half years, while the conflict threatens to disrupt the flow of supplies from the region.

Meanwhile, European wheat futures jumped to a record peak, and wheat prices reached 344 euros per ton at the Euronext group, which operates a number of European stock exchanges.

Ukraine is a major exporter of corn, most of which goes to China and the European Union. Russia is also competing in supplying wheat to major buyers, such as Egypt and Turkey.

An adviser to the Ukrainian president’s chief aide said the army suspended commercial shipping in Ukrainian ports after Russian forces invaded the country, fueling fears of supply disruption.

Officials and sources in the grain sector had previously said Russia also indefinitely suspended the movement of commercial ships in the Azov Sea, but kept its ports on the Black Sea open to navigation.

In the midst of this political dilemma, the countries of the Middle East, mainly Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and the Maghreb countries, are threatened with a serious problem, as their major reliance on Ukrainian and Russian wheat would be difficult to compensate from other markets.

Lebanon faces a severe crisis

Lebanon had lost its grain storage capacity since the massive explosion that rocked the port of Beirut in August 2020 and destroyed the wheat silos.

On Friday, Lebanese Economy Minister Amin Salam told Reuters that wheat reserves were sufficient for one month at most, adding that he was seeking to conclude import agreements from different countries amid market concerns over the Ukrainian crisis.

He added that Lebanon, which imports nearly 60% of its wheat from Ukraine, was in talks with other countries including the United States and India to import wheat.

“We don’t want to create a state of panic, we have positive indicators,” the minister told Reuters.

Earlier on Friday, Georges Berbari, the ministry’s general director of grains and sugar beets, told Reuters that Lebanon’s wheat reserves were enough for 1.5-2 months.

Two wheat shipments headed for Lebanon were being loaded in Ukraine, but they have been delayed by the war, he revealed.

Distress call from Yemen

The World Food Program (WFP) warned on Thursday that the war in Ukraine would likely increase fuel and food prices in war-torn Yemen, which could push more residents into starvation as aid funding dwindles.

The WFP has had to cut food rations for eight million people in Yemen, as the seven-year war between the government and the Iran-backed Houthi militias has pushed the country to the brink of famine.

“The escalation of conflict in Ukraine is likely to further increase fuel and food prices and especially grains in the import-dependent country,” said a WFP statement on Thursday.

It added: “Food prices have more than doubled across much of Yemen over the past year, leaving more than half of the country in need of food assistance.”

“We have no choice but to take food from the hungry to feed the starving and, unless we receive immediate funding, in a few weeks we risk not even being able to feed the starving,” the WFP statement cited WFP Executive Director David Beasley as saying.

“This will be hell on earth,” he warned.

A daunting task

In Egypt, the most populous Arab state and the world’s biggest importer of wheat, the authorities will scramble to find urgent alternatives to feed 100 million citizens, with the country importing about 40% of its needs from Russia and Ukraine.

However, multi-pronged moves are likely to solve the crisis, including the local expansion of wheat cultivations and diversification of imports, in addition to having reasonable reserves that are enough for six months.

Moreover, the country’s local production is sufficient to produce daily bread, Dr. Saad Nassar, economist and advisor to the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture, told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Egypt’s state grains buyer, the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC), cancelled its international purchasing tender on Thursday because of a lack of offers. The Authority received one offer at $399 a ton for 60,000 tons of French wheat on a free-on-board (FOB) basis in its international tender on Thursday, traders said.

Reassuring messages

In Tunisia, the Ministry of Agriculture revealed the availability of sufficient grain stock to cover local needs until next May.

Abdel Sattar Fihri, Director of Supply at the Grain Office, said that about 80% of Tunisia’s grain imports came from Russia and Ukraine, which necessitates taking precautionary measures as the crisis could last long and impact shipments.

He added that the Ministry of Agriculture had ordered a search for other markets, such as Bulgaria, Romania, Uruguay and Argentina, for new bid requests, and to avoid Russia and Ukraine during this period.

Similarly, a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Trade said on Thursday that his country has a sufficient strategic stock of wheat from its purchases from local farmers, adding that he was not worried about reserves. But he added that Iraq might resort to the market to buy wheat if the crisis between Russia and Ukraine is prolonged.

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US Energy Chief Says Gas Prices Could Stay Above $3 per Gallon Until Next Year

Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright testifies during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP)
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright testifies during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP)
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US Energy Chief Says Gas Prices Could Stay Above $3 per Gallon Until Next Year

Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright testifies during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP)
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright testifies during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP)

US Energy ‌Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday he believes gas prices have peaked but predicted that they may stay above $3 per gallon until next year.

Gas prices have risen during the US and Israeli war on Iran and Iranian attacks on nearby countries, creating political headwinds for President Donald Trump ahead of the November midterm elections, where his Republican Party will defend slim majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Gas below $3 a gallon "could happen later this year, that might ‌not happen until ‌next year. But prices have likely ‌peaked, and ⁠they'll start going ⁠down," he told CNN’s "State of the Union" program. "Certainly with the resolution of this conflict, you’ll see prices go down."

Trump administration officials have offered differing views on how gas prices may shift. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week predicted gas prices would fall to the $3 per gallon range this summer, ⁠while Wright on Sunday laid out a ‌lengthier likely timeline to reach that ‌price.

Trump himself has said that gas prices may remain ‌elevated until November.

All of them have said gasoline will eventually ‌get cheaper once the Iran war ends. "Under $3 a gallon is pretty tremendous in inflation-adjusted terms," Wright said. "We'll get back there for sure."

The average price for a gallon of regular gas on Sunday ‌was $4.05, according to an estimate by AAA, compared to $3.16 a year ago.

The US and Iran ⁠on ⁠Thursday agreed to a 10-day ceasefire, but Trump on Sunday accused Iran of violating it with attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend. US officials will arrive in Pakistan for further negotiations on Monday, Trump wrote in a social media post.

"We're offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran," he posted, revisiting a threat he had made prior to the ceasefire.

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IMF, World Bank Meetings Show Limits in Mitigating Shocks, Reliance on US for Solutions

A street food vendor uses a mobile phone while waiting for customers on a street in Hanoi on April 17, 2026. (AFP)
A street food vendor uses a mobile phone while waiting for customers on a street in Hanoi on April 17, 2026. (AFP)
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IMF, World Bank Meetings Show Limits in Mitigating Shocks, Reliance on US for Solutions

A street food vendor uses a mobile phone while waiting for customers on a street in Hanoi on April 17, 2026. (AFP)
A street food vendor uses a mobile phone while waiting for customers on a street in Hanoi on April 17, 2026. (AFP)

Global finance leaders, whipsawed by Middle East war news, came to grips this past week with their inability to mitigate the economic damage from increasingly frequent geopolitical shocks, and a realization that counting on US leadership to resolve crises is no longer the guarantee it had long been.

At International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, participants swung from gloom over a worsening global economic outlook due to deepening energy price and supply shocks to tentative optimism as it appeared Iran may reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow flows of oil, gas, fertilizer and other commodities to resume.

By Saturday that optimism was already fading amid new attacks on shipping. The IMF and the World Bank pledged up to a combined $150 billion in new financing assistance for developing countries hit hardest by the massive energy price shock, and celebrated their re-engagement with Venezuela's acting government after a seven-year pause.

They warned countries not to hoard oil and not to go overboard with expensive and untargeted fuel price subsidies. But in the end, there was not much they could do but watch statements from Tehran and the White House.

"Actually, some of ‌the most important decisions ‌on the global economy are not happening here," Josh Lipsky, international economics chair at the Atlantic Council, said of the ‌IMF ⁠and World Bank campus.

"The ⁠single most important development in the global economy happened between the US and Iran," he said. "We hope it's good news, and we'll wait and see."

Despite buoyant stock markets and a sharp drop in oil futures prices on Friday, Saudi Arabia's Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan summed up the mood of many officials when he said he would not be comfortable predicting an improved outlook until tankers start moving freely through the strait again with reasonably priced insurance and physical energy prices dropping.

"If the clear waters are open," Al-Jadaan told a news conference, "I think that's what would trigger, for me, a change in the scenario."

As soon as the IMF released a mild cut in its global growth forecast for 2026 to 3.1% under the most optimistic of three scenarios it devised for the task, it said that was already outdated and that the global economy was drifting towards a more adverse growth scenario of just 2.5%. ⁠The fund's latest World Economic Outlook said a prolonged war could push the global economy into recession.

SHOCK AFTER SHOCK

Before the US ‌and Israel launched attacks on Iran at the end of February, the global economy had just been recovering from ‌last year's shock from President Donald Trump's wave of steep tariffs on global trading partners. Discussions of trade tensions were more muted at this year's meetings, as was Russia's war on ‌Ukraine, though G7 finance ministers pledged to keep up pressure on Russia.

But a constant drumbeat of shocks that started with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and Russia's ‌invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was teaching countries the US is no longer "the general" of the international order and would not necessarily provide solutions, Lipsky said.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday launched an initiative calling for G20 countries, the IMF and World Bank to take coordinated action to ensure adequate access to fertilizers amid supply disruptions from Gulf countries. But seven weeks after the war's start, that will do little to ease shortages and high prices for farmers now planting spring crops across the Northern Hemisphere.

Kevin Chika Urama, chief economist at the African Development Bank, said the ‌Middle East crisis provided a fresh imperative for African countries to deepen regional trade and economic ties, work on alternative energy sources, expand their domestic tax bases, and tap into enormous natural gas reserves.

"Geopolitical tensions are the new normal ⁠and uncertainty in policymaking has become certain," he ⁠told a panel with other chief economists from the multilateral institutions.

NOT OUR WAR

Finance ministers, central bankers and other officials attending the meetings expressed frustration at being thrust into another economic calamity by Trump's actions.

Behind closed doors, officials, particularly from Europe, sent a clear message to the US that Washington needed to take action to reopen the strait, a senior finance official who attended the meetings said. In public, the comments were more diplomatic with less finger-pointing.

"The knot of this conflict is the Strait of Hormuz. We need this to open, but not at any price," French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters. "I don't want to pay a dollar to go through the Strait of Hormuz."

Successive shocks, including this war, have scrambled planning for developing economies "and you hardly have time to breathe," Retselisitsoe Adelaide Matlanyane, Lesotho's Minister of Finance and Development Planning, said during a panel of African ministers.

"For small, open, and vulnerable economies like Lesotho, these shocks have presented extraordinary pressures on the fiscals, on prices and on everything."

Matlanyane said managing debt has now become very complex and the tensions have "brought on a sense that we have to rethink policy and we have to think differently."

"It's frustrating dealing with this," she told Reuters.

For Thailand, a net energy importer that will host IMF and World Bank annual meetings in October, the lingering effects of destroyed Gulf oil and gas infrastructure will keep prices elevated for a long time, said Ekniti Nitithanprapas, deputy prime minister of Thailand.

But he said the crisis was an opportunity for Thailand to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and boost the role of renewable energy, including solar farms - the opposite of Trump's energy agenda. "We need to commit to transform... to help people transform to face the new fragmented world and high oil prices," Nitithanprapas said.

Business

Saudi Food Self-Sufficiency Shields Economy from Hormuz Crisis

Containers are seen at a port in Saudi Arabia. (SPA)
Containers are seen at a port in Saudi Arabia. (SPA)
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Saudi Food Self-Sufficiency Shields Economy from Hormuz Crisis

Containers are seen at a port in Saudi Arabia. (SPA)
Containers are seen at a port in Saudi Arabia. (SPA)

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed global energy and food security to the brink. Saudi Arabia responded by positioning itself as a stabilizing force, turning its western coastline into a lifeline that not only protected its domestic market but also helped offset shortages in neighboring countries.

A proactive strategy that raised self-sufficiency in key food products above 100% helped the Kingdom mitigate the fallout from the geopolitical crisis. Backed by efficient logistics and strong local content, Saudi food security has evolved beyond a statistical benchmark into a pillar capable of absorbing global shocks and keeping goods flowing smoothly amid turbulence.

Official data underlines that shift. The General Authority for Statistics’ 2024 food security report showed record increases in self-sufficiency across several plant and animal products compared with 2023, with some exceeding 100%.

The gains were driven by sustained investment in agriculture, stronger domestic supply chains and diversified import sources. Together, they shielded the local market from sharp disruptions, helping stabilize prices and maintain supply, reinforcing food security as a core pillar in managing global crises.

Ports have been central to that effort. Shura Council member Fadel bin Saad Al-Buainain said Saudi Arabia’s strategic location on the Red Sea and the Gulf provides multiple high-efficiency ports supported by integrated logistics that sustain flows of goods and cargo.

He said the Kingdom faced no difficulty meeting demand or exporting goods after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, successfully using Red Sea ports as an alternative route. That ensured uninterrupted flows, avoided shortages or price spikes, and strengthened confidence in government measures to contain the impact of geopolitical tensions.

Saudi efforts extended beyond its borders. Al-Buainain said the Kingdom helped compensate for shortages in Gulf states whose imports were disrupted, using Red Sea ports, expanding storage capacity, activating fast-track transit agreements and linking Gulf ports to move goods, alongside overland transport.

“These are tremendous efforts that went beyond the Kingdom’s borders to reach all Gulf states, reinforcing cooperation and integration and underscoring the importance of the Gulf Cooperation Council,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Strengthening local content has been key. Al-Buainain said the Kingdom achieved significant self-sufficiency, particularly in agriculture, alongside other goods including oil-sector industrial parts, whose local availability helped facilities recover quickly after what he described as Iranian attacks.

Sustained local supply has been central to curbing inflation and stabilizing prices, while strategic reserves of essential goods have served as an effective buffer, enabling the state to absorb shocks and meet market demand without disruption, he stressed.

The availability of imports does not guarantee price stability, as rising costs, particularly in air freight, have driven price increases in markets rather than shortages, he added.

Strategic reserves also help regulate prices, Al-Buainain said, noting the role of the Ministry of Commerce in pricing stockpiles at reasonable levels and preventing exploitation during crises.

Saudi Arabia’s transport and logistics system has leveraged its strategic location to generate economic returns while strengthening national security in its broader sense, including food, medical and commodity security, whether sourced locally or imported through western ports.

Osama bin Ghanem Al-Obaidy, an adviser and professor of commercial law, said the Kingdom’s push to develop agriculture and livestock sectors had driven self-sufficiency rates above 100% in several products, reflecting the strength of local production and its ability to meet both domestic and external demand.

Those efforts helped maintain supply and stabilize prices during the Hormuz crisis, which disrupted shipments and drove up shipping and insurance costs, contributing to a sharp rise in global food prices, particularly wheat and rice, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Al-Obaidi said the crisis strained global supply chains, causing bottlenecks in goods and vital fertilizers as shipping through the strait declined. Saudi western ports, led by Jeddah Islamic Port and Yanbu, have become key logistics hubs, securing domestic supply while serving as vital arteries for neighboring countries.

Data from the statistics authority showed shrimp self-sufficiency at 149%, dairy products at 131% and table eggs at 103%.

Vegetable self-sufficiency also reached high levels, with eggplant at 105%, okra at 102%, cucumbers at 101% and zucchini at 100%. Dates recorded the highest rate among fruits at 121%, followed by figs at 99%.

In livestock, data from the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture showed the Kingdom met 61% of its red meat needs locally, with production exceeding 270,000 metric tons. That stability boosted market resilience and its ability to meet rising demand, especially during peak seasons.

In poultry, a key component of the Ramadan food basket, self-sufficiency reached 72%, with production surpassing 1 million metric tons. The surplus not only met local demand but also supported exports, alongside tighter oversight to ensure market stability and protect supply chains from external shocks.

The result has reinforced Saudi Arabia’s position as a global contributor to sustainable food security, backed by an outward investment strategy that includes stakes in major producers such as Brazil’s BRF and Ukraine’s MHP, helping secure supplies at source.