CAIRO: Mohamed Gabr tosses a few tomatoes into a rubber basket, then some zucchini. He huffs when the seller tells him the price, attempting to bargain. “Sorry, that is the price,” he is told, handing over a few pounds and walking slowly out of the shop in the Sayeda Zeinab market in central Cairo. “It's getting too expensive. All food is rising in price these days and we don't have much money to pay for it all,” he told Bikyamasr.com last week. His frustrations were confirmed on Saturday by a study published by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), the official statistics body in Egypt, who reported that inflation in the country increased to 9.2 percent in February, up from 8.6 percent in January. The report, published on its website, said that food and beverage costs, the biggest component of the consumer-price index, increased an annualized 12.6 percent compared with 11.2 percent in January. February's higher inflation figure follows “a depreciated exchange rate as compared to the previous year,” said Nada Farid, a Cairo-based economist at investment bank Beltone Financial told Bloomberg news agency. “We believe the Central Bank of Egypt will keep policy rates unchanged” at its upcoming meeting, “to balance between slight inflationary pressures and still-weak economic prospects.” Egypt's gross domestic product increased slightly by 0.4 percent in the three months through December 31, compared with growth of 0.2 percent in the previous quarter and 5.6 percent a year earlier, according to a Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation report. Egypt has requested a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, part of support sought by the government to boost an economy struggling to recover from a year of unrest in the wake of the uprising that ousted Mubarak last February. Egypt's central bank on Feb. 2 left the overnight deposit rate unchanged at 9.25 percent and the overnight lending rate at 10.25 percent. But for the likes of Gabr and other Egyptians, who continue on salaries they have had for the past decade, some longer, the rising costs are continuing to hit them hard, in the wallet and on the plate. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/H9eHo Tags: Costs, featured, Food, Inflation, Prices Section: Business, Egypt, Latest News
