Trade Ministry to receive rice from farmers no later than Jan. 31

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi Trade Ministry has specified Jan. 31, 2010 as a deadline to receive rice from farmers. “The Ministry has so far received 102,740 thousand tons of rice from farmers,” the Ministry said in a release on Tuesday received by IraqiNews.com news agency. It said that the Ministry’s technical staff will contract with private factories to prepare the supplied quantities of rice for human consumption. Iraq consumes around 1,200 million tons of rice per year. MH (P) /SS 2