ABU DHABI/CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s state grain buyer, the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC), received offers from seven suppliers on Friday for its wheat tender, Cairo-based traders said.

The lowest offer was $177.70 a tonne free-on-board (FOB), for two cargoes each of 60,000 tonnes of Russian wheat, the traders said.

Results for the tender, seeking shipment from Sept. 26 to Oct. 5, were due later on Friday.

An eighth supplier, Venus, was disqualified at the technical stage for not having the correct documents and was prevented from submitting an offer, traders said.

This is GASC’s first attempt to purchase wheat after Egypt’s Minister of Supply Khaled Hanafi resigned on Thursday, the most senior-level fallout from an investigation into whether millions of dollars intended for subsidising farmers were used to purchase domestic wheat that only existed on paper.

Egypt’s supply ministry, which also oversees GASC, is in charge of a massive food subsidy programme.

Trade minister Tarek Kabil has been put in charge until a new minister is appointed.

Traders said the following offers were made in dollars per tonne FOB:

*Union: two cargoes each of 60,000 tonnes of Russian wheat at $177.70

*Nidera: 55,000 tonnes of Russian wheat at $179.70 a tonne

*Alegrow: 60,000 tonnes of Russian wheat at $180.88

*Ameropa: two cargoes each of 60,000 tonnes of Romanian wheat at $180.11

*Daewoo: 60,000 tonnes of Russian wheat at $178.60

*Louis Dreyfus: 60,000 tonnes of Ukraine wheat at $179.94

*ADM: 60,000 tonnes of Romanian wheat at $208.89

(Reporting by Maha El Dahan and Eric Knecht; Additional reporting by Valerie Parent in Paris; Editing by Jason Neely and Susan Fenton)