Bread queues are back. Mona El-Fiqi finds out why Long queues of people waiting in front of baladi bread bakeries for hours have become a common scene in Cairo and other governorates. Due to the long bread lines, it has become very difficult for low-income citizens to get their needs of the subsidised baladi bread, which is an essential component of their calorie intake. "I had to take a bus to reach the bakery that sells the subsidised baladi bread and then stand in line for an hour and half to buy my family's needs of bread," said Soad Ahmed, a maid and mother of three. Due to the limited amount of bread available, the bakery refuses to sell more than 20 loaves of bread to each customer. "I usually stand at the queue twice to get my needs for the next two or three days to avoid coming every day," Ahmed added. Although the market is full of unsubsidised baladi bread at various prices in addition to white bread, the subsidised baladi bread remains the most popular choice because it costs a mere five piastres a loaf. "Nothing can be an alternative for the baladi bread for poor people since a kilo of subsidised baladi bread costs LE0.45 while a kilo of rice is LE2.5 and macaroni is LE3," says Ahmed Mohieddin, a government employee. While the international average for annual per capita consumption of bread is 90 kilos, the Egyptian average is twice that. Baladi bread tops the list of items subsidised by the government, and its price has remained unchanged since 1987. The Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade sells the subsidised flour at LE300 per tonne to 15,000 baladi bakeries throughout the country. The average market price of flour is somewhere around LE1,800 per tonne. One of the reasons behind the shortage of subsidised baladi bread is that some bakery owners illegally sell part of their quotas of subsidised wheat flour at market prices. To overcome this problem, Gouda Abdel-Khaleq, head of the Tagammu Party's Economic Committee, recommended that the government separate bread production from its distribution. In Abdel-Khaleq's vision, each bakery would have to produce a defined amount of bread according to its quotas of subsidised flour while a separate distribution chain should sells it to consumers. One more reason behind the shortage of baladi bread is the bureaucratic procedures required to open a bakery, limiting the market's ability to react to higher demand. "It took a whole year to get a licence, which is a very long time." said Ahmed Khalil, a bakery owner. Moreover, as Farag Wahba, chairman of the Bakeries Owners Division at the Federation for Chamber of Commerce argued, consumers share the blame for this shortage. Some consumers buy large quantities of bread and use it to feed livestock, since it is cheaper than fodder. Wahba also claimed that ministry inspectors used to warn bakery owners if they found any violations but that they no longer do so. Wahba went on to attack the government's methods of disciplining bakery owners as misguided. For example, if a bakery owner violates the rules, according to Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade regulations, he is punished by a reduction in his quota of wheat flour or the closing of the bakery for a month, on average. "This is a punishment for consumers not for bakery owners and leads to further shortages and longer lines in front of other bakeries. A violator should pay fines instead of losing quotas," Wahba added. To overcome the shortage of the bread selling for five piastres a loaf, another kind of subsidised bread appeared. The ministry sells flour at LE900 per tonne to bakeries to produce a 90 gramme loaf of bread, which is then sold for 10 piastres. During the last few years, with the recurring shortages and poor quality of subsidised bread, a new kind of bread has appeared. Bakeries which do not deal with subsidised baladi bread can buy flour at market prices and sell higher-quality baladi bread for LE0.25 a loaf. Last week, the government decided to cancel the sales tax on white bread, in an attempt to bring down its price. Mahmoud Mohamed Ali, chairman of the Sales Tax Authority announced that the decision, which is a part of recent amendments on some items of the existing sales tax law, was taken for social reasons. Consumers were predictably pleased to hear of this decision. "I hope that white bread will be cheaper since it's essential for my children's school sandwiches," said Hoda Saleh, a government employee and a mother of two. Saleh added that any tax reduction should be translated into a final cheaper price for consumers. Mohamed Suleiman, owner of a white bread bakery in Nasr City, said that the abolishment of sales tax on white bread will not necessarily mean the reduction of bread prices, but would allow for better quality. Suleiman argued that "abolishing the sales tax can help bakery owners increase the bread weight and improve its quality." The Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade has no control on the weight or the price of white bread, which are set by individual bakeries. "Since we buy the bread at market price, the weight of a loaf of bread might be changed every day according to the price of flour."
