CAIRO - Egypt aims to plant 3.5 million feddans (1.47 million hectares) of wheat for the next fiscal year 2024/2025 compared to 3.2 million feddans from the current one of 2023/2024, Egypt's planning minister said on Sunday.

Reaching the target would expand wheat storage capacity to 5.2 million tonnes, compared to approximately 3.9 million tonnes of wheat in the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

Egypt's plans for strategic crops for the next fiscal year also include 2.8 million feddans of corn and 220,000 feddans of fava beans, the planning minister said.

Egypt wants to reduce imports by increasing land for agricultural production by 750,000 feddans, bringing total agricultural area to 10.7 million feddans, the statement said.

(Reporting by Momen Saeed Atallah, Writing by Adam Makary Editing by Tomasz Janowski)