
Cooking oil is among the items families need the most
Families with ration cards are set to receive an extra LE100 for a six-month period to spend on subsidised essential food items. The decision goes into effect on 1 September.
Egypt’s ration cards, estimated at 8.1 million, benefit 9.1 million families, or 37 million people, said Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli at a press conference following a cabinet meeting in the Mediterranean city of New Alamein last week.
The monthly cost of the six-month increase is LE833 million.
Individuals with ration cards already receive LE50 per person in cash to spend in designated government shops for basic commodities. They are also entitled to five loaves of subsidised bread per person per day. Subsidies to foodstuffs will cost the government around LE90 billion in the current budget.
Supply Minister Ali Moselhi earlier announced that beneficiaries can receive a subsidised 800 ml bottle of cooking oil with every ration card to a maximum of four bottles, two kg of sugar for each individual registered on the card to a maximum of eight kg for each card, and one kg of rice and 800 g of pasta for cards with less than four individuals on them and two kg of rice and 1.6 kg of pasta for families of four or more individuals.
Regarding the remaining value on the ration cards, people can pick their needs from a list of food items to which various commodities have been added including vegetable ghee, flour, tahini, tuna, and jam.
This brings the total number of subsidised food items sold via ration cards to 30.
“Any subsidised commodity is a win for poorer individuals,” one middle-income woman in her 50s who preferred to remain anonymous told Al-Ahram Weekly.
She said the new value on the ration cards would help poorer families, especially as the price of cooking oil, often used on a daily basis, has risen from LE18 to LE31 per litre.
However, Heba Al-Leithi, a professor of economics at Cairo University, said that “these new offers are painkillers, as they don’t address the primary problem, which is poverty.”
The government decided to increase the value of the ration cards temporarily to ease the burden on people suffering from hikes in the prices of food staples, she added, noting that since the Covid-19 pandemic the state has been trying to alleviate the financial burdens that many people suffer from.
For example, following the spread of Covid-19 the government granted financial aid to informal workers, Al-Leithi noted.
The middle-income woman in her 50s also noted that there are poorer families who do not have ration cards, while some better-off people enjoy their benefits. Al-Leithi said that the government should check the database of beneficiaries and exclude those who are better off.
The data of families benefiting from ration cards and families in need have been reviewed by the Administrative Control Authority.
While Al-Leithi welcomed any system that would increase people’s access to essential foodstuffs, she said the government should also establish projects to absorb unemployed workers, set up manufacturing projects, improve healthcare and education, and help the needy make more money without financial aid from the state.
According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), annual headline inflation in Egypt recorded 14.6 per cent in July 2022, up from 6.1 per cent in July 2021.
CAPMAS attributed the price hikes to increases in the prices of grains and bread by one per cent, dairy products by 5.2 per cent, and fruit by 7.5 per cent.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 1 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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