CAIRO, 24 April 2005 — Egypt is facing a shortage of wheat flour for subsidized bread after the government failed to purchase enough wheat to satisfy demand. Bakeries in lower income neighborhoods are already reporting shortages — something that in the past has led to popular unrest. Following the shortage in September 2003 that lasted for months, the government announced plans to increase Egypt’s domestic supply of wheat. Last January, Minister of Supply Hassan Khedr told Parliament that increased local production would cut wheat imports by half in a few years. “With half of it imported from abroad, the government has decided to increase the amount of cultivated wheat by 100,000 feddans.” (1 feddan = 1.03 acres)
According to Khedr, Egypt needs 12.8 million tons of wheat per year and imports LE7.8 billion worth annually to make the 270 million loaves of subsidized bread a day that the country’s limited-income citizens survive on.
A program put in place in 2003 provides incentives for farmers to grow wheat, giving them an additional LE100 per feddan cultivated. Farmers, however, said the government incentive was too low to go through the trouble of growing wheat. “The government is still thinking as if we are living in the 1970s. One hundred pounds will not encourage anyone to leave more lucrative crops,” said Adel Abdou, a farmer in Giza. “They have to give us more incentive like providing cheap seed, pesticides and equipment if they want us to produce more.”
Meanwhile, this March the government switched wheat suppliers and bought 50,000 tons from Syria instead of from the United States, which had just raised its prices. Egypt was expecting to buy the rest from the United Kingdom, but last minute concerns over quality delayed the sale and suddenly there wasn’t enough wheat flour to cover demand.
The government is currently monitoring the baladi (flatbread) bakeries to ensure an equitable distribution of wheat and see that no customer is getting more than 20 loaves a day. “We are making sure that bakeries are not selling large quantities of 5-piaster baladi bread to middlemen, who resell it for 10 to 15 piasters as has happened before,” said Ashraf Marzouq, a member of the ministry team monitoring the market. “We also fine bakeries that reduce the size of baladi bread and sell the leftover subsidized flour on the black market.”
Farah Wahba, chairman of the bakers’ committee at the Egyptian Federation of Chambers of Commerce, said many bakeries in Cairo have already closed down, as they have not received their supply of flour. “If you check popular, crowded places like Shubra, Al Daher and Sayyeda Zeinab where people depend mainly on baladi bread, you will find many closed bakeries because the government ignored their repeated requests for flour,” said Wahba. “I’m afraid that the bread crisis will surface again if the government does not move fast,” he told Arab News.