JEDDAH, 11 May 2008 — In an attempt to mimic the severe flour shortage that gripped Saudi Arabia less than three months ago, there are still some local bakery owners who reduce bread production.
Arab News tried to purchase Arabic bread from as many as 10 bakeries in various districts of the city and was turned away as bakery staff blamed reduced bread production levels on the lack of available flour in the market.
One bakery employee told Arab News, “We are forced to make low quantities of bread because we don’t have enough flour to produce enough bread to satisfy demand.”
However, Minister of Agriculture Dr. Fahd Balghunaim told the Shoura Council recently that the Kingdom’s silos and flour mills are currently working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to avoid shortages.
He also conveyed confidence in the flour market by adding that the problem would be solved through the establishment of two new mills in Riyadh and Jouf, amidst the additions of high-speed mills to increase flour production in Jeddah, Madinah and Hail, each by as many as 12,000, 45 kilogram bags per day, respectively.
“Total output of these two new mills will reach 48,000 bags daily and 16 million bags annually,” Balghunaim was quoted as saying by Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper.
Balghunaim has blamed shortages of flour in the past on local animal farmers. The problem resulted when the price of barley, used to feed livestock, increased drastically due to lower-than-average winter rains, which hurt the crop. In retaliation, farmers began mixing the staple with barley to use as animal feed.
In order to combat the problem, the government recently increased barley subsidy by 71 percent to wean farmers off the practice. The minister added that there is flour scarcity due to smugglers selling the staple to neighboring countries to turn a quick buck.
In response to the string of problems, Minister of Interior Prince Naif recently imposed a ban on the sale of flour as animal feed and warned local traders caught selling flour at increased prices that they would be apprehended and their shops closed.
To get to the bottom of exactly why local bakers were complaining of a flour shortage while government officials have maintained a stance of an adequate wheat supply of at least six months, Arab News spoke to Basheer Abbas, an employee at Al-Gharbia Supermarket and Bakery in Jeddah.
“Traders are able to legally buy flour for as low as between SR35 per bag from the GOGSF but because the organization doesn’t check or catalog how many bags are going to each bakery, traders are able to hoard the flour and cause a fake shortage to sell the flour at double the price to other local businesses,” he said.
When Arab News spoke to a source at GOGSF about the claims, the source laughed, “That is really funny because the Kingdom is well stocked with flour and has been making it available to traders in every city at reasonable prices ranging in the mid-30s.”
He added that he would look into the issue of monitoring sales.
Abdulkareem, a bakery employee at Al-Barakah Bakery in Jeddah, said that recently he has been approached by several traders wanting to sell him flour at between SR60 and SR90, double or triple the legal price. “I think the only solution to solving the problem once and for all is for GOGSF to ration and monitor the number of bags shipped to a particular shop,” he said.
