CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said it was time to increase the price of the country’s subsidised bread, revisiting the issue for the first time since 1977 when then president Anwar Sadat reversed a price rise in the face of riots.
El-Sisi on Tuesday did not specify the amount of any potential increase, but any change to the food support system in the world’s largest wheat importer would be highly sensitive. Bread was the first word in the signature slogan chanted in the 2011 uprising that unseated former president Hosni Mubarak.
Bread is currently sold at 0.05 Egyptian pounds ($0.0032) per loaf to more than 60 million Egyptians, who are allocated five loaves a day under a sprawling subsidy program that also includes the likes of pasta and rice, and costs billions of dollars.
“It is time for the 5 piaster loaf to increase in price,” El-Sisi said at the opening of a food production plant. “Some might tell me leave this to the prime minister, to the supply minister to (raise the price); but no, I will do it in front of my country and my people.
“It’s incredible to sell 20 loaves for the price of a cigarette.”
Previous attempted changes to the subsidy program, which caused deadly bread riots in 1977, were agreed as part of former President Anwar Sadat’s loan deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
El-Sisi’s government has also turned to the IMF, which granted a $12 billion loan in 2016 and a one-year $5.2 billion loan last year, but specified that food subsidies should only reach those most in need.
The loan program also required higher fuel and electricity prices.
“I’m not saying we make it significantly more expensive, to as high as it costs to make it, 65 or 60 piastres, but (increasing the price) is necessary,” El-Sisi said.
“Nothing stays stagnant like this for 20 or 30 years, with people saying that this number can’t be touched.”
The Egyptian supply ministry will immediately begin studying raising the bread price and will present its findings to the cabinet as soon as possible following El-Sisi’s remarks, minister Ali Moselhy told local newspaper El-Watan.
El-Sisi has sought to rein in Egypt’s massive subsidy program by targeting those deemed to be sufficiently wealthy while leaving bread prices untouched.
Hussein Abu Saddam, head of the farmer’s syndicate, told Reuters: “The decision is right and comes at a very suitable time. It helps us finish with the old practices and customs, in which the president was always afraid of touching bread prices, fearing the outcry of the poor.”
A hashtag which translates as “except the loaf of bread” trended on Twitter in Egypt by Tuesday afternoon with more than 4,000 tweets.
Last year the country shrank the size of its subsidised loaf of bread by 20 grams, allowing bakers to make more fixed-price loaves from the standard 100kg sack of flour.
“I hope that this is not poorly received, as if we are planning to make a big jump in prices ... we are only talking about achieving balance,” El-Sisi added.
In its 2021/22 budget, Egypt allocated 87.8 billion Egyptian pounds ($5.6 billion) to subsidise supply commodities and support farmers.
Of that amount, 44.8 billion pounds are allocated toward the bread subsidy.
The government set a wheat price assumption of $255.00 per ton in fiscal year 2021/2022, from $193.90 a ton the previous year, according to the budget. Egypt last bought wheat on Monday for $293.74 a ton c&f.
Wheat prices globally have rallied over supply concerns during the coronavirus pandemic.
Egypt’s El-Sisi calls for first bread price rise in decades
https://arab.news/m5rvz
Egypt’s El-Sisi calls for first bread price rise in decades
- Al-Sisi on Tuesday did not specify the amount of any potential increase
- "It is time for the 5 piaster loaf to increase in price," al-Sisi said at the opening of a food production plant
Over 10,000 people displaced in 3 days in Sudan: UN agency
- The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises
PORT SUDAN: Violence in western and southern Sudan displaced more than 10,000 people within three days this week, according to figures released by the UN’S migration agency on Sunday.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have waged what the UN has called a “war of atrocities,” killing tens of thousands of people and uprooting more than 11 million.
Between Dec. 25 and 26, attacks on the villages of Um Baru and Kernoi near Sudan’s western border with Chad displaced more than 7,000 people, according to the International Organization for Migration.
After its takeover of the North Darfur capital of El-Fasher in October, the RSF has pushed westward in recent days, through enclaves inhabited by the Zaghawa ethnic group and controlled by a militia.
Between Christmas Eve and Friday, a further 3,100 people were displaced from the famine-stricken city of Kadugli in South Kordofan, which has been under siege by paramilitary forces for over a year and a half.
Resource-rich Kordofan is currently experiencing the fiercest fighting, as the RSF and its allies seek to recapture Sudan’s central corridor, which runs from Darfur back toward the capital, Khartoum.
The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the north, east, and center while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
