CAIRO: Egypt's Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) launched this week an online portal listing local and international commodities' prices with the support of the Ministry of Finance. The new portal, which will be updated daily, was launched at the IDSC's 25th anniversary by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. The portal provides retail and wholesale prices of various agricultural and other food commodities on daily, weekly and monthly basis, as well as the international prices of a number of commodities to compare between. "The portal aims at continuously analyzing the commodities market to identify shortages and other supply problems as well as serving citizens, merchants and decision makers," local reports cited Nazif as saying. Classified into eight subgroups — vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and poultry, dairy products, cereals and sugar — the portal includes 730 commodities. "The initiative is great as it increases consumer awareness and helps protect [consumers] from merchants' manipulation," said Abu Al Hagag Morad, general manager of economic branches at the Cairo Chamber of Commerce. "However, the problem is that the low amount of available products leaves prices under the control of a handful of merchants having a huge monopoly power in the market, especially in fruits and vegetables," he added. According to Morad, the prices of various commodities should be capped at a certain level which merchants should not be allowed to exceed. "Wholesale merchants buy huge amounts of commodities and gain control of the market and impose high prices on retail merchants and the consumer has no alternatives due to lack of competition," he said. Egypt has witnessed seasonal increases in food prices; the latest being a hike in tomatoes reaching a record LE 12, fueled by a shortage in the local yield and extreme weather conditions before it returned to its normal rates. Morad demanded a similar index be distributed with newspapers to maximize consumers' awareness.
