For the past six weeks, Khulud Mustafa has walked past the butcher near her apartment in Cairo's run-down Ain Shams district, casting wistful looks at the meat hanging outside his shop as the price has steadily risen. From the equivalent of $8 per kilogramme (2.2 pounds), to $9, then $13. When it peaked at more than $14, she stopped looking. "I asked him, 'Are you crazy? What are you doing? How can it go up that fast?'" said Moustafa, a 24-year-old housewife with 3 children. "How are we supposed to eat?" Moustafa's voice is one in a growing chorus of despair and frustration over rising prices of everything. The surge in the price of meat blamed by officials on a mafia of traders has led to a movement to boycott meat. Near daily protests have been held outside parliament on a variety of economic issues, including demands for an increase in the minimum wage, which since 1984 has been stuck at $6 per month. Across the country over the past year, there have been numerous strikes at factories demanding better working conditions and salaries. The protests have mostly been small, but they cast a spotlight on an income disparity that critics contend goes to the heart of Egypt's social and economic woes. The build-up of frustration comes at a critical time for the country. Against that backdrop, rallies over food prices, salaries, housing and a host of other issues present an ominous message to the government. "The Egyptian people have become the dry wood ready to catch fire," said Mahmoud El-Askalany, who is with the consumer group Citizens Against the High Cost of Living and an organiser of the meat boycott. "Social peace in Egypt has come under threat," El-Askalany said, citing an increase in theft, homicides and other crimes where money was the motive. "These are statistics that point to the fact that there is a revolution of hunger in the making." So far, the economic protests have not merged with political ones that have also been held with increasing frequency demanding political reforms. On Monday, a demonstration organised by opposition lawmakers and two reformists groups who oppose the renewal of the country's nearly 30-year old emergency laws ended violently. Mubarak has raised civil service salaries by 10 per cent, though that increase only affects bureaucrat's core salaries, not the bonuses and incentive pay that can turn a 300 pound ($55) per month wage into 1,000 pounds ($180), for example. It has also been pushing ahead with an economic reform programme launched five years ago that helped boost economic growth rates to 7 per cent before the onset of the global financial meltdown in 2008 compared to a 3.9 per cent rate in 2000-2001. This year, GDP is projected to grow by about 5.4 per cent, according to Mideast investment bank Beltone Financial. But the growth is widely seen as mainly benefiting the upper class, and the business elite that form a core support for the government. In an interview with state newspapers published Wednesday, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif vowed that increasing economic growth will "ease Egypt's problems." He downplayed the significance of the various economic protests, calling them "merely a new way of expressing opinions by anyone who things he has been wronged." The food price issue is particularly sensitive for the government.
