Saudi Arabia has confirmed plans to import wheat and cut purchases of the grain from local farmers by 12 per cent a year to conserve water, a newspaper said on Monday.

'The Grain Silos and Flour Mills Organisation will buy wheat from abroad,' agriculture minister Fahd Bilghoneim was quoted as saying by Al Eqtisadiah daily.

The paper said the ministry was 'committed to applying the (new) rules and protecting the agriculture sector'.

An official told Reuters earlier this month the government was abandoning a 30-year programme to grow wheat that achieved self-sufficiency but depleted the desert kingdom's scarce water supplies.

Riyadh would start reducing purchases of wheat from local farmers yearly and move to 100 percent reliance on foreign imports by 2015, the official said.

Saudi Arabia produces 2.5 million tonnes a year of durum and soft wheat. Cereal and dairy farms across the parched desert country account for 85 per cent of water consumption.

Al Eqtisadiah said purchases from local growers would be reduced by 12 per cent each year. Officials have told Reuters the government could offer wheat farmers compensation, either through helping them switch to other crops, such as feed for livestock, or cash handouts.

Bilghoneim gave no details in his comments carried on Monday.    Farms are already suffering from culling of poultry since November after the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was found near the capital Riyadh.

Bilghoneim said poultry farmers would be compensated for their losses, the newspaper reported.-Reuters