Although most people drink tap water, many members of the public opt for bottled water, especially as water dispensers for domestic use are becoming more expensive. For more than a month now, the local market has been somewhat short of bottled water, particularly the big 19 litre containers, while the 1.5 litre bottles are also in high demand. The shortage seems to be connected with an increase in price, as some of the 19 litre brands have shot up from LE20 to between LE23 and LE30 per container, depending on the standard of the supermarket and the district it serves. “The company that used to drop off one large container on my doorstep for me each week has temporarily suspended its home delivery service since mid-March," says Hala Ali, a middle-aged housewife. The reason, as explained in an SMS sent by the company to its clients, is a huge fire that in March damaged production lines and some of the warehouses of Nestle, which accounts for around 50 per cent of market supply. The company‘s initially thought it could resume its home delivery service at the end of May but, according to Adel Farghali, director of the company, the balance between supply and demand will probably not be restored before mid-September, as he told Al Shorouq Arabic-language daily. The companies say the price rise can also be blamed on soaring production costs, as the plants' electricity and water bills have increased dramatically, although their consumption remains steady. The increase in the value of the US dollar against the Egyptian pound has also caused imports to shoot up in price, including PET, the raw material used for the production of bottles. According to the chairman of one of the companies working in this field, a tonne of PET has skyrocketed in a matter of months from LE6,000 to LE7,500, at a time when industrialists are having to buy their dollars on the black market. They have been complaining that banks have been running down their dollar supplies, hence there are not enough to meet import needs, leaving industrialists and businessmen no option but to turn to the black market. However, in a move described as an exceptional measure to encourage banks to support the domestic economy, the Central Bank of Egypt on Sunday auctioned $600 million to the banks. The aim, according to a statement made by the bank, is to enable banks to pay for basic imports of goods including wheat, industrial materials and medicines. The intervention of the Central Bank to prevent the local economy from collapsing is perceived by men of industry as a positive step that might keep the markets afloat for some time. But there are other factors that are having a detrimental effect, not only on the supply of bottled water but on a wide variety of other locally produced items. The shortage of diesel, as Mamdouh Al-Attar, who works for another company, says, has had an adverse effect on transporting goods from the factories to the retailers. A senior official at a bottled water company says the shortage of bottled water can also be blamed on the Ministry of Health's closure of some companies, because the water extracted from the wells they use did not meet the necessary specifications. Fingers have been also pinpointed at poor market supervision, allowing traders to charge different prices for the same product. In a bid to keep an eye on the markets, the Consumer Protection Agency held a meeting last week with bottled water companies, in order to be apprised of the name of every distributor and agent, to facilitate the investigation of complaints made by consumers. It has also posted on its website a list of the companies officially licensed to produce bottled natural water.
