Subsidised gas cylinders are in short supply. Mohamed Abdel-Baky asks why After spending seven hours trying to procure a single gas cylinder Nagui Mahmoud returned to his home in Cairo's Warraq neighbourhood. "It will be cold food for dinner tomorrow. There's no gas," Mahmoud told his three kids. Over the last two weeks Egypt has witnessed an acute shortage of replacement gas cylinders, affecting the daily lives of millions. The shortage has led to soaring prices, with the LE5 subsidised cylinder changing hands for up to at LE60 on the black market. In some Cairo neighbourhoods people queue for hours outside government distribution outlets. "I've been here since 6am waiting to exchange my cylinder," Mustafa Ibrahim, a 49-year-old government employee, told Al-Ahram Weekly as he stood outside the main cylinder supplier in Kit Kat in Imbaba. "I did the same yesterday but failed." He had taken the day off from work to try and get gas after his wife had been unable to cook for two days. At 3pm a lorry arrived carrying 800 cylinders, insufficient to satisfy the 1,000 strong crowd. Two young boys were injured in a fight with dealers who had pushed their way to the front in order to make a deal with the supplier. One of the dealers bought more than 15 cylinders for LE15. Later he was selling them for LE45 each. The ministries of social solidarity and of local development announced earlier this week that shortages had followed the closure of several Egyptian ports due to bad weather, hitting gas imports for three days. Officials at the Ministry of Petroleum, though, blame the shortage on bulk buying by the owners of small businesses over the last two weeks. A source in a gas company who spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity said that the Ministry of Petroleum's explanation was the most plausible. "The price of the diesel which industry needs is triple the price of the butane gas," said the source. In an attempt to combat the shortages Cairo Governor Abdel-Azim Wazir issued a decree banning the sale of cylinders to factories. Meanwhile, Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmi has promised that the number of cylinders reaching the market daily will be increased to 1.2 million. "Since the beginning of February we've supplied the market with eight per cent more than our usual quota," says Abdel-Alim Taha, chairman of the General Petroleum Authority. Some 50 per cent of Egypt's butane gas is imported, he added. Another reason for the current shortage of cylinders available to be sold at the subsidised price is the recent proliferation of a black market. For years Ministry of Social Solidarity inspectors were successful in stopping the trade. "We used to be able to control the distribution outlets. With hundreds of people now waiting outside our job has become much more difficult," an inspector standing at one of the distribution outlets in Al-Baragil, Imbaba, told the Weekly. He added that they had managed to arrest some dealers caught selling gas cylinders on the black market. They now face a minimum fine of LE500. The gas cylinder shortages remind many of last year's bread shortages, when subsidised flour was being sold at a profit on the black market, leaving many members of the public to battle over a loaf of bread.
