CAIRO, July 18 -- Egypt's Minister of Supply and Internal Trade Sherif Farouk said the country's reserve of wheat is enough for 6.9 months, Egypt's official news agency MENA reported on Thursday.

Farouk said that this reserve has been secured via the procurement of wheat from local farmers and the ministry's recent procurement of 770,000 tons of wheat from Bulgaria and Russia, the report said.

He stressed the government's keenness to continue promoting the strategic reserve of wheat allocated for producing subsidized bread for six months.

The Egyptian government has quadrupled the subsidized price for the traditional flatbread to 0.2 Egyptian pounds (about 0.0041 U.S. dollars) nationwide since June 1, the first such move in three decades to alleviate the heavily strained public budget.

For years, nearly 70 million people, or 60 percent of Egypt's population, counted on the long-running bread subsidy scheme to fill their stomachs. Before the price hike, the government's production cost of each loaf was 1.25 pounds.

  - Xinhua