Colombia imports 99.7% of wheat flour for domestic production

Since last year wheat has increased considerably and is now more affected by the crisis in Russia and Ukraine. In addition, bread is one of the obligatory products on the table of many families.

According to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), in the last year the increase in bread has been more than 19%.

For Henry Vanegas, general manager of the National Federation of Cereal, Legume and Soy Growers (Fenalce), he said that the situation is complicated for Colombia, due to the high costs of raw materials imported from other nations.

Vanegas added that the main reason for the increase is that, “we import 99.7% of the wheat that arrives in the country. From an old age, wheat sowing began to weaken in Colombia, research was stopped and the custom of heavy bread was changed, where the dough had to be cured and the next day it was done in a traditional way... but over time it was changed to another type of lighter bread, perhaps with more yeast, but without the need for tradition in the making” , he explained.

All these changes meant that the national wheat was destined for biscuit and cuchuco mixes and not for the production of bread.

For her part, Pilar Ortiz, director of the Fedemol Chamber of Andi, in dialogues with LA W, assured that companies affiliated to the Fedemol chamber import 99.7% of wheat used to produce wheat flour.

It should be noted that, it is the main input for foods such as bread, cookies, pastas and all pastry products.

This has led to the fact that, although it was usual to find bread at $500 and $600, they could rise and look above $700.

Regarding the import of wheat flour, he stated that: “In our opinion there is no need to import wheat flour because we are net wheat importing countries and that is what we go through milling, that is to say through our plants and that is where wheat flour comes from, which is additionally fortified wheat flour (...) is sufficient domestic production”.

Finally, he added that if flour is imported, the 120,000 jobs currently generated by the industry would end.

Currently, wheat is imported with tariff 0 and the Government is looking to extend this for two more years.

For his part, Henry Vanegas mentioned that one of the requests to the Government is to encourage the production of agri-food foods in the country.

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