When Saad Shoukri visits a petrol station, the thing that he does almost two or three times a day, he delves deep in thought about the subsidy system in Egypt. The 53-year-old taxi driver might have coughed out almost treble the amount of money he pays for fuelling his car now if the subsidies were not there. That is why he feels grateful, but at the same time shudders in fear at the prospect of cancelling out the subsidy system one day in the future. “The Government should never do that,” Shoukri said. “This will affect the lives of millions of Egyptians negatively for good,” he added in an interview. That is the fear of millions of people who live in this country and depend in their food, transport, and healthcare on subsidies. While the Government has not spoken openly about cancelling out the subsidy system, worries haunt the life of Egyptians, around 42 per cent of whom are reported by the World Bank to be living under the poverty line, over the future of this subsidy system. For these people, subsidies are something they can not do without. They are, as Shoukri put it, the indispensable addition to the lives of millions of people. Although he needs to be driving his car for hours every day to be able to put food on the table for his children, like millions of Egyptians Shoukri spends equally long hours in long lines in front of bakeries that sell subsidised round bread. He says he could better invest these hours, but to him “the alternative is very expensive”. “The unsubsidised bread costs me five times as much as I pay for the subsidised bread,” he said. “This means that I would pay a big portion of my earnings to buy the bread. The problem is that I've other things to buy, he added. Perhaps this is why millions of Egyptians show up at the lines in front of the bakeries every day in the morning. They are people who can not afford pay for the unsubsidised bread. Quarrels have become a common thing in these lines. Some people even died while fighting for their places in the lines in front of the bakeries that make the bread that is an essential component of the diet of the people of this country. “None can do without these subsidies,” said Shehab Mohamed, a 24-year-old accountant. “They offer a necessary backing for the poor of Egypt,” he added. Some people say much of what ails Egypt seems to converge in the story of subsidized bread. But the subsidy system has steeped too deep in corruption and mismanagement. That is the ordeal of government clerks and experts who want to reform a system that feeds almost 83 million prople. Egypt started subsidising staples like bread, sugar and tea around World War II, and has done so ever since. When it tried to stop subsidising bread in 1977 there were riots. Egyptians are generally not known to be violent or bloodthirsty, but the controversy surrounding the subsidies has instilled fear into the days of millions of Egyptians. Bread subsidies continues, costing the government about LE10 billion ($2.74 billion) a year. Over all, the government spends more on subsidies, including gasoline, than it spends on health and education. But it is not just the cost of the subsidy that plagues the Government. The subsidy also fuels the kind of rampant corruption that undermines faith in Government, and discourages investment, some people say. But this has not irritated Fawzya Moneer, a housewife, in any way. All Fawzya cares for is for her to be able to get a letter from the health ministry to allow her to take free medicines for the diabetes she has been suffering for years now. Moneer, a 60-year-old single mother, cannot pay for her medication. That is why she has to spend hours in front of the Specialised Medical Councils in central Cairo to get approval from officials there so that she would be given the medicine for free. “Despite this, I don't take the medicine properly,” Moneer said. “Sometimes they give me alternatives, which are not always as effective as the original medicine,” she added. The Ministry of Health says it managed to treat 2.2 million Egyptians for free last year. Some people say these 2.2 million Egyptians are a mere fraction of the number of people who can not pay for their medication in this country. The Egyptian economy grew at the healthy rates of 7.2 and 7.1 per cent in 2007 and 2008. But it only grew by 4.7 per cent in 2009, the thing that prevented the required trickle down to happen. So instead of making life on the streets more stable, the statistically strong economic performance has only made people more annoyed. Bread subsidies contribute greatly to social stability in Egypt, yet there exist academic and political tendencies to abandon the system in the interest of market-based efficiency, some people say. This represents a shift in contemporary economic ideology historically focused upon maintaining calm after Cairo's 1977 bread riots, they add. Observers say international pressure to liberalise the Egyptian economy paradoxically conflicts with Western desires to suppress religious fundamentalism in Middle Eastern countries like Egypt that has been the birthplace of several terrorist organisations that cost this country many lives during the 1990s. Some estimates put the number of Egyptians who eat the subsidised bread at 50 million, or two-thirds of the population. The small round flatbread is sold at state-monitored bakeries and distributors for five piastres (less than a US cent) a loaf, its price unchanged in decades. Better quality baladi bread is available at 20 piastres a loaf, while the same bread made using unsubsidised flour is available at market prices five times the cost. Poor families often buy a mix of qualities as their budget permits. “I don't know whether the subsidies are still there or not,” said Ali Ibrahim, a 49-year-old Railway Authority worker. “Everything is getting expensive,” he added. Ibrahim earns 600 Egyptian pounds (US$ 109) a month. He has four children who are enrolled in state-run schools. Although they receive what he calls “substandard” education at these schools, he can not enrol them in private schools, simply because this needs “a fortune” to do. “Life has become so hard and expensive these days,” he said. “The government says it continues to subsidise commodities and services. OK, if this is true, what will the people of this country do if these subsidies are not there?” he asked before he went away to resume his work.
