The council of ministers will discuss soaring meat prices in its next meeting, in hopes of devising a national strategy to control the market and encourage local production and import of fresh and frozen meet. Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza approved requests by private sector companies to import 60,000 cattle and 44,000 tons of frozen meat, to be sold on the retail market for LE30 per kilo. "We also approved importing 5000 sheep from Ethiopia, 28,000 camels from Sudan, 24,000 tons of frozen meat from India, and 1000 tons of lamb from Brazil," Abaza said. In a related development, the meat production department of the Ministry of Agriculture has supplied the local market with large quantities of locally produced meat to be sold for LE40 per kilo. For her part, Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Abul Naga said the private sector is encouraged to import meet from Ethiopia in return for exporting different Egyptian products in order to improve bilateral trade between the two countries. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
