Amira Abdel-Nabi, a housewife, complains of the high prices demanded by merchants in the vegetable and fruit market she can now barely afford to visit. “I used to buy vegetables and fruit that would last me for a month for LE100. Now I have to pay LE200 and still I don't have enough for my family of six. We have to go without for 20 days a month now because of the high prices. Those responsible should remember that people have to pay other bills like electricity bills each month as well,” she said. One shopkeeper in Giza Square said that the problem lay with the government, which was not properly monitoring prices. “Vegetable and fruit prices have been going up for the last three years now for many reasons. There is the problem of the monopoly of some merchants, for example, with the price of a kg of potatoes, an essential ingredient in most Egyptians' meals, now reaching LE7 or LE8 in some areas.” “Some merchants also sell poor-quality produce at high prices. We have consumer associations in Giza that sell rice, sugar, tea and other products, but they rarely sell vegetables and fruit. So you have to go to Dokki to get those,” he said. Yehia Al-Sunni, chairman of the Vegetables and Fruit Department of the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, agreed that prices were too high, but he put a large part of the blame on consumers. “What determines the price of any product is the degree of demand for it in the market. In our case, vegetables and fruit are in demand because consumers buy large quantities of them and far more than their needs. They fear that they will not find them the next day, so they overbuy, and this means that we all end up with fewer vegetables at higher prices.” However, he said that the Chamber of Commerce was taking action to tackle the problem. “During a meeting between chamber representatives and the vice-governors of Giza and Cairo we met with representatives from the consumer organisation Together against Rising Prices and others and called for more consumer association outlets to be set up to provide more vegetables and fruit across Egypt,” he said. Al-Sunni also compared markets in Europe with those in Egypt. Consumers in the former buy only their daily needs in quantities they know they will consume, while those in the latter often resort to storing products out of fears that they will not find them again. Al-Sunni acknowledged that some merchants were also charging high profit margins, some of them “buying produce straight from the farmers and then storing them to drive up market prices.” But he also said that other factors could determine high prices, including the weather. “Most crops, like the potato crop, depend on the season they are cultivated in, and this determines prices. The farmers cannot always be blamed for high prices any more than the distributors,” he said. “The problem is that fertilisers and labour are too expensive,” said Galal Helmi, a landowner in Fayoum. “The government associations only provide part of our needs when it comes to fertilisers. For example, to plant onions we need 10 sacks of compost, and they only provide us with four, so we have to buy the rest on the black market at a cost of more than LE500. Merchants also manipulate the prices they buy our crops at, usually only paying the lowest prices. If we don't sell them at the prices they want, no one else will buy them either. Many merchants now also have their own land, so they can even do without buying our produce,” he said. Ahmed Abbas, chairman of the Internal Trade Sector of the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade, explained the pricing of fruit and vegetables in Egypt. “Every Thursday, we meet with the wholesale merchants, representatives of the Consumers Protection Authority, and civil society representatives and determine the price of produce on the market. We have 15 military vehicles in which we pack three tonnes of vegetables and fruit to sell at wholesale prices. The Ministry of Agriculture also sends us 15 more vehicle loads to be distributed in the Greater Cairo area. We have a total of 3,600 outlets selling vegetables and fruit at wholesale prices, and these are working in the governorates as well,” he said. According to Abbas, the government is doing what it can to prevent prices from increasing, but this is something that also depends on merchants. “There are merchants who want to make large profits for themselves, but on the other hand there are also wholesale merchants who display produce at prices everyone can afford.” Proper profit margins, he said, should not exceed 20-25 per cent, while some merchants may make double that sum, claiming high overheads, for example. Measures can be taken against merchants who trick consumers into buying at higher prices, for example by not writing the real prices on the produce. Anyone caught doing this can be fined LE5,000 under consumer protection Law 67/2006. According to this law, merchants are not allowed to conceal pricing information from consumers, and the consumer has the right to compensation, in the form of money or produce, if a product he buys causes him actual financial or physical harm. Among the most important pieces of information that a consumer must know is the price of a product, its ingredients, and its source. Merchants may not confuse consumers about their products, and governors are responsible for overseeing prices in their governorates, the aim being to ensure that market manipulation does not occur. The 2009 liberalisation of the markets enabled merchants to control the prices of fruit and vegetables more, however, and this took control away from the government. In 2010, merchants claimed that poor crops, bad quality seeds, and the overall economic recession were behind the high prices seen in that year. In 2011, the prices of vegetables and fruit increased even more due to security problems in the country, with some merchants claiming that they had had to hire more workers to guard their goods from thieves. In the same year, Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) statistics said that the prices of foodstuffs had increased by 18.9 per cent. Similar problems were seen in 2012, with prices fluctuating from one governorate to the next. This year, prices have increased by some 35-50 per cent. Al-Sunni believes that the solution to the problem lies in greater planning and smarter shopping. “A farmer does not have a map depicting the needs of consumers to determine what quantity of produce he should plant. This is the role of the government, which should give him instructions such that the market as a whole is better planned. Consumers, especially housewives, should not be ashamed to buy a quarter of a kg of tomatoes, for example, to keep down prices either, this being simply the amount they actually need to cook with each day.” But according to Abdel-Nabi, “the merchants should have mercy on us. There are some people who have even called for boycotting vegetables and fruit, which is not a practical idea, but it will be our only choice if we don't see prices go down soon,” she said. “We need the eyes of the border guards and the police to be on the products that enter Egypt's cities. We need inspectors from the Ministry of Health and Agriculture to see that what people are eating is healthy, and we need people from the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade to monitor the prices of fruit and vegetables in the market. Unfortunately, some countries treat the Egyptian market as a kind of huge basket they can throw their rubbish in,” commented one Giza shop owner. “The government should take matters into its own hands by giving more financial support and providing more fertilisers to landowners. It should also buy crops itself before they get into the hands of the merchants. That way, the government could control prices directly, and all Egyptians would have enough to eat,” Helmi commented. However, Abbas predicted that prices would fall. “We will have vegetables and fruit at wholesale prices, from 10 to 25 per cent less than current ones, in all Al-Ahram and Al-Nil consumer associations and in some 1,400 outlets by the end of this month,” he said, “and private markets will do the same by the beginning of next month”.
