CAIRO: The Ministry of Social Solidarity announced that it will be subsidizing better-quality bread in an effort to reduce demand on the 5-piaster loaf. The better quality bread, usually sold for 20-25 piasters a loaf, will be subsidized and sold for 10 piasters. This comes after months of escalating discontent about the scarcity of subsidized bread. The queues at bakeries are getting longer and tenser by the day with reports indicating that around 15 people have died in violent bread-related incidents. In efforts to solve the problem, the ministry also agreed with the Armed Forces' public service body to start between 12 and 24 production lines for subsidized bread. The ministry would then distribute the bread in the capital's densely populated districts. The same department in the Armed Forces had previously intervened to ease similar problems by distributing around 100,000 loaves to six bakeries in Cairo. The government has also increased the capital's rations of subsidized wheat to reach 3,300 tons. It had previously increased the rations of other seven governorates. Known as the "the bread queues crisis, this issue has surfaced after the dramatic increase in global wheat prices, which lead to the smuggling of subsidized wheat out of the designated bakeries to be sold in the black market. Another means of resolving the bread crisis was a government decision to separate the production and distribution processes. Public joint stock company El Masryeen has already started distributing subsidized commodities - namely bread and propane tanks - through designated outlets. It is scheduled to start delivering bread straight to homes for a flat fee of LE 3 a month sometime soon.
