Chapter 289 The Formation of a New System
2028 3 Month 17 Day.

The sunny and beautiful Magic City.

Omar and his team, as well as several other representatives from grain trading companies in West Asia and North African countries who were in charge of grain procurement, were invited by COFCO Group and other companies to come to a business building.

As he entered, Omar saw an old acquaintance.

“Happy, you’re here too?”

A middle-aged white man with a beard turned his head and smiled: “Omar, are you also here to participate in the food purchase?”

“Of course. International food prices are too high right now. Lucia and Kievan Rus probably don’t have much food to sell to us.” Omar explained with a wry smile.

Habib nodded slightly: “Indeed, our company went to Russia to negotiate on behalf of the Saudi Emirate a few days ago, and the price they offered was also very high, and the quantity was very small.”

“You’ve already gone? How much is Lucia willing to give?”

Habib had no intention of keeping it secret. After all, such things would be clear once checked: “This year, the export quota for wheat is only 1000 million tons.”

“1000 million tons?” Omar’s voice suddenly became sharper. “It’s a huge drop? Are they so severely affected by the weather this year?”

“Well, according to the feedback from our company’s negotiation team, the southern part of Russia’s East European Plain and Novosibirsk Plain is still frozen. In previous years, the southern plains of these areas have gradually thawed. This year’s planting time may be delayed by about a month compared to previous years.”

Omar frowned. “No wonder Lucia doesn’t dare to increase the quota. Are they worried that the harvest this year will be bad and affect food reserves?”

Habib also thinks so: “This is most likely the case. After all, the weather in recent years has been too abnormal. They dare not sell their reserves casually, especially when there are serious problems with food production in North America and Western Europe. They dare not reduce their food reserves.”

Thinking of the business negotiation, Omar asked quickly, “By the way, COFCO Group said they want to introduce new products to us. Do you know what the situation is?”

“I know. I’ll take you there and then you’ll know what the new product is.”

“Let’s go!” Omar pulled Habib impatiently.

A group of people came to an exhibition hall.

Several chefs are cooking some common dishes in the West Asia and North Africa region, such as naan, flatbread, flatbread, pilaf, Ottoman kebab, etc.

Habby picked up a freshly baked flatbread, put the roasted lamb, cucumber shreds, tomato slices, and onion shreds prepared on the side on the flatbread, and squeezed some special sauce on it.

Omar, who didn’t know what was going on, also made a pie: “What’s going on? Where is the new product?”

“Try it and see.”

“Eat…” Looking at the burrito in his hand, Omar took a bite. After he put it in his mouth, he didn’t feel anything wrong. But after chewing it a few times, he found something different: “What does this taste like? Why does it taste a bit like chickpeas?”

Holding the burrito in his hand, Hubby smiled and said, “This is their new product.”

“Is this cake made of beans?” Omar immediately responded: “Is it made of Senzu beans?”

“That’s right. I heard it’s a new variety, a variety that is more suitable as a staple food. These cakes are made from the flour ground from the Senzu beans.”

Omar and several others also tasted it carefully.

After a while, after eating the pancake in his hand, Omar expressed his opinion: “The taste is similar to chickpea flour. If you like chickpea flour, you should be able to accept this kind of flour. But since they specifically recommended it to us, there must be something special about it, right?”

“They call this bean flour a complete nutritional bean flour, which can meet the daily needs of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and some vitamins.”

“Oh?” Ali was a little surprised: “Is this bean flour so good?”

“Well, this flour can solve the problems of hunger and malnutrition, which is especially suitable for you in Egypt,” Habib reminded.

As for why it is suitable for Egypt, it is because Egypt is too poor and has a large population. Many people can only rely on bread subsidies to barely avoid starving to death.

In this situation, there must be many malnourished people among the poor in Egypt.

“What about the price?”

“COFCO’s price is 3100 yuan per ton.”

“Export price?”

“Of course, otherwise you think it’s the landed price?”

Omar fell into deep thought. The value of the Chinese yuan has soared recently. At the end of last year, the exchange rate of the Chinese yuan to the US dollar was 7.04:1, and this month it has soared to 6.81:1.

“Are you worried about the exchange rate?”

“Yes!” Omar did not hide anything. Egypt’s foreign exchange reserves were very tight and he was very worried about the future situation.

Habib reminded, “You should find a way to convince those people in your country! Increase the Huayuan reserves as soon as possible, otherwise, if you purchase with US dollars, you will definitely lose more and more money.”

Habib did not lie to Omar about this. The Emirate of Saudi Arabia increased its holdings of a large amount of Chinese yuan last year. The current reserve amount has reached about 1300 billion Chinese yuan, making it almost the world’s largest Chinese yuan reserve country.

The reason why they have such a huge reserve of Huayuan is that the proportion of Huayuan in their oil and gas settlements in recent years has been getting higher and higher, and they have unknowingly reserved so much Huayuan.

This time, the appreciation of the Chinese yuan made the Saudi Emirate earn a lot of money.

Of course, since Huayuan is used to settle oil and natural gas, and these Huayuan are used to purchase various industrial and agricultural products produced by Seres, this kind of added value is actually not very significant.

After all, Europe and the United States are very reluctant to use the Chinese yuan for settlement, which makes the Chinese yuan in the Saudi Emirate somewhat unusable.

This is also an important reason why they encouraged Egypt to use the Chinese Yuan for settlement.

As long as other countries also adopt the Chinese yuan for settlement, Saudi Arabia’s Chinese yuan reserves can be consumed.

In fact, even though Saudi Arabia has so many Chinese yuan in reserve, it has no intention of selling them off. The reason is that Chinese yuan has a lot of value anchors. Except for oil, natural gas and mineral resources, other industrial products and agricultural products can basically be purchased.

Saudi Arabia itself is a core producing area of ​​oil and natural gas, and mineral resources require specific industries to consume. They do not have large-scale heavy industries and labor-intensive light industries, so there is naturally no need to import mineral resources on a large scale.

Essentially speaking, Saudi Arabia is a typical resource-based country, while Serbia is a typical all-round industrial and agricultural country. To a certain extent, the two can complement each other.

After all, it doesn’t matter who you sell mineral resources to.

Now that the value of the US dollar is constantly increasing, Saudi Arabia dare not hold too many US dollars. Moreover, there are not many products suitable for purchase from North America.

Industrial products? You must be kidding. There aren’t many industrial products worth showing off in North America right now.

Agricultural products? The global climate change caused by the North Atlantic warm current has caused great trouble for agriculture in North America and Western and Eastern Europe, leading to a surge in global food prices.

Otherwise, Habib and the others would not have come to Seris to purchase food.

Without cheap industrial and agricultural products as a value anchor, what else can the US dollar do?
Are you going to purchase medicines, plasma, luxury goods, or buy real estate and financial products in North America?

This is obviously impossible.

The annual purchasing scale of the former is limited, and not many people are willing to buy the latter.

For example, U.S. bonds, which once dominated the global financial market, are now basically ignored.

Even Japan, South Korea and the European Union, which were forced to buy U.S. debt, are using various means to delay or secretly resist.

There is no way. The U.S. debt crisis has intensified. Although Seres still holds nearly 3000 billion U.S. dollars in U.S. debt, Seres is not worried about America causing trouble.

The reason is very simple. U.S. Treasury bonds are not a fixed debt, but a liquid debt that can be traded.

In other words, the only way for America to default on the U.S. debt held by Seres is to default on all debts of the world at once.

Otherwise, once America announces that it will not repay the U.S. debt held by Seres, the consequence will be the instant collapse of U.S. debt around the world.

This kind of thing is related to financial credit. If you dare to default on the U.S. debt held by Serbia today, can you default on the U.S. debt held by other countries tomorrow?
This is more serious than starting the S3 season directly.

Once financial credit is damaged, the difficulty of rebuilding it will increase dramatically.

Now America is in a very embarrassing and dilemma situation.

Without injecting water into the U.S. dollar currency pool, their trade deficit is soaring wildly again, and the U.S. dollars at home and abroad cannot circulate as quickly as before.

Continuing to inject water into the US dollar will rapidly exacerbate its depreciation, while raising the cost of living at home, and it will be difficult for exports to recover quickly.

Apparently, America’s previous strategy of conquering the world has begun to fail.

The only way to save America is actually very simple, that is to cut off the tail and survive. The first step is to freeze all US debts and international dollars.

The second step is to stop importing all products and resources.

The third step is to force the country to produce the products in short supply.

This plan is to retreat directly to North America, be a turtle for decades, and then rely on North America’s unique geographical location to restore the industry, and maybe make a comeback.

To restart isolationism, it depends on whether there is anyone in America who dares to make this decision and whether they have the ability to deal with the various internal forces.

Obviously, they don’t have such a person in their ranks at the moment.

Therefore, we can only continue to drink poison to quench thirst.

Against this backdrop, various parties around the world have begun to stir, with some regions even blatantly engaging in trade settlement in Chinese yuan.

For example, Saudi Arabia’s settlement in Chinese yuan would have been a disaster in the past, but now America, which is already struggling to take care of itself, does not have much energy to deal with the waves that are rising around the world.

…

After talking for a while, Omar was eager to settle directly in Huayuan. After all, in this way, they would not suffer losses due to exchange rate fluctuations between the US dollar and the euro.

At this moment, Ali’s phone rang: “Sorry, manager, I’ll go answer the call.”

“It’s ok.”

Ten minutes later, Ali came back from outside with an excited smile on his face.

Omar saw his expression and guessed that there might be some good news: “What makes you so happy?”

“Manager, Deputy Manager Atemu called me just now. He said he couldn’t get through to you, so he called me.” Ali explained first, and then continued: “Deputy Manager Atemu told me a good news just now.”

“Is it convenient to talk here?” Omar reminded.

“It doesn’t matter. The news may come out tonight.”

“Then just say it directly!”

“The country and Serbia have reached an agreement to allow the Huayuan to be used to pay for the Suez Canal toll.”

“Oh?” Omar’s eyebrows lit up immediately: “It is indeed good news, but how much is the fee?”

Ali told what he knew: “50 Chinese yuan per ton of goods.”

“50 yuan per ton?” Omar estimated in his mind.

Serbia has a well-developed maritime trade. Every year, at least 50 million tons of goods pass through the Suez Canal and belong to Serbia. If the charge is yuan per ton, the revenue would be almost billion yuan.

As Habib said just now, the export price of Seres’ Senzu soybeans is 3100 yuan per ton. Adding a few hundred yuan for transportation costs, the landed price is about 3800 yuan per ton.

If 1000 million tons are purchased each year, 380 billion yuan will need to be paid.

It seems that the Chinese yuan received by the Suez Canal is not enough to pay for the purchase of soybeans.

But don’t forget that Egypt, as the administrator of the Suez Canal, has the right to decide what currency to charge as crossing fee.

As long as they enforce the rule that settlement must be made in Huayuan, then all the major shipowners will have no choice but to accept such unfair terms.

With the Suez Canal’s annual cargo volume of about 15 billion tons, it can generate revenue of about 750 billion yuan per year.

By then, there will not only be enough money to buy food, but there will also be a surplus of 370 billion yuan.

With the current value of the Huayuan, they can purchase a large amount of things.

“And there’s good news.”

“Any more good news?”

Ali could hardly suppress the excitement on his face: “It’s the Qattara Depression, manager, do you remember it?”

“Qattara Depression?” After thinking for a while, Omar finally remembered: “Is it the depression in the northwest of Matrouh Province?”

“That’s right, it’s right there.”

“What’s the good news there?”

“We have reached a cooperation agreement with the Global Water Group in Seris. They are willing to build a large desalination plant for us, planning to pump 500 billion cubic meters of seawater from the Mediterranean Sea every year.”

“…” Omar was shocked.

After a while, he came back to his senses: “There should be conditions, right?”

Ali nodded: “Of course, otherwise why would the Seres help us? The first condition is that our international trade settlement and Suez Canal tolls must be settled in Chinese Yuan.”

“and then?”

“The second condition is that the management and operation of the desalination plant is to be undertaken by Global Water Group, which holds 100% of the shares.”

Omar frowned: “We don’t have any equity at all?”

“Because it involves confidential technology, they don’t want us to get involved in the management. However, this desalination plant is only responsible for supplying fresh water. How to sell the water is the responsibility of our local company.”

Hearing this, Omar reluctantly accepted: “What about the price?”

“Compared to Seris, the ex-factory price is 0.3 yuan per cubic meter.”

“0.3? That means we need to pay 150 billion yuan every year? Isn’t that too much? I mean, the amount of water is too much. The entire depression should not use 500 billion cubic meters of fresh water, right?”

Omar finds this price acceptable, as it is already very cheap. If it were the current mainstream reverse osmosis desalination plant, the cost would probably be more than ten times higher.

“Of course. The entire plant is divided into five phases, with the first phase producing 100 billion cubic meters. The country has decided to start the Northwest Development Program and build the Qattara Depression into a second Nile Delta.”

“I see.” Omar breathed a sigh of relief. At least the country was not confused.

If they build a 500 billion cubic meter desalination plant all at once, they will not be able to utilize so much water in a short period of time and can only inject the water into the depression in vain.

You should know that the altitude of the Qattara Depression is lower than the Mediterranean Sea. Therefore, as long as the barrier of about 70 kilometers between the Mediterranean Sea and the Qattara Depression is broken, the Mediterranean sea water can flow into the Qattara Depression continuously, and then form a vast inland saltwater lake.

You should know that the area of ​​the Qattara Depression is about 1.8 square kilometers. As long as a lake is formed and a desalination plant is built on the shore, fresh water can be obtained continuously.

Moreover, there is no human habitation around the Qattara Depression, and the local ecology is originally desert and Gobi, so it is relatively simple to deal with the discarded crude salt. Just find a few larger depressions nearby and dump the crude salt directly, which is equivalent to an artificial salt mine.

Compared with the hundreds of millions of acres of newly added arable land, even dozens of square kilometers of land contaminated by crude salt is acceptable to Egypt.

After all, with the population exceeding 1.2 million, the arable land in the Nile Delta and the Nile Valley can no longer support Egypt’s food security.

Although these newly added lands and water resources were controlled by Seris companies, they felt that the price was acceptable.

If they can develop hundreds of millions of acres of new arable land, they can quickly alleviate domestic population pressure and gain new development opportunities.

There are no mines at home, and they can only collect a little toll, which is not enough to support Egypt’s population of 1.2 million.

“This time, not only will a desalination plant be built, but also the Alamein-Nasheed Canal and two hydroelectric power plants will be built.”

Omar was also confused when he heard about these projects: “Such a huge investment? How can we find the domestic funding?”

“Of course it’s loans and the sale of operating rights.” Ali shrugged indifferently.

“That’s acceptable.” Omar knew very well that it would be impossible to obtain so many investments and projects without a price.

After all, if we don’t seize this opportunity, once the population pressure continues to increase, it may really explode.

As a transportation hub for trade between Europe and Asia, Egypt’s geographical location is actually good, but its natural environment is relatively harsh. If their population could be controlled at around 1000 million, they could indeed live very comfortably, but their current population has reached 1.2 million.

For a region like this that has no resources or advantageous industries and has very poor agricultural conditions, it is impossible for such a large population to be effectively transformed into human resources. Instead, it will become a time bomb.

Habib on the side kept silent. He had heard all these things, of course, but he didn’t say anything. After all, Saudi Arabia had mines at home and didn’t need to gamble like Egypt.

(End of this chapter)