which says that food problems in Egypt have a lot to do with corruption and not just world markets:
The de rigueur analysis of the issue
has gone something like this: the rising costs of oil —necessary to
distribute foodstuffs throughout the country — coupled with a tripling
of wheat prices since last summer, have spiked bread prices in Egypt to
unaffordable levels. This in turn has put a monstrous strain on
Egypt's subsidized bread market, to the point that the
government-subsidized bread supply can no longer keep up with the
nation's burgeoning demand. And voila, global market forces take their
toll on the Egyptian marketplace, which — bolstered by popular support
for worker's rights in Mahalla —culminates in mass protest. Nothing
President Mubarak or the NDP could have foreseen, such uncontrollable
global economic forces, right?
But hold on a second. This is Egypt,
a country that produces enough wheat to satisfy its bread requirements
for at least six months. Moreover, despite the rising global costs of
wheat, Egypt has more than enough hard cash on hand to satisfy the rest
of its wheat needs by purchasing it on the open market. Something else
must be at stake here. There is.
The heart of the matter lies in the
gross mismanagement of Egypt's subsidy program. I am by no means
trying to diminish the severity of rising food prices globally, but the
whip of the market alone in no way explains the Egyptian government's
inefficient subsidy system, or the rampant corruption therein. Run
almost by caprice, Egypt's subsidized bread program fails to monitor
eligibility for subsidies, but instead sells subsidized flour to
government bakeries, who then purport to use said flour to make cheap
country — or baladi — bread, at a very marginal profit.
With no serious government management
of the process beyond that point, the system is highly vulnerable to
corruption, with struggling bakers selling subsidized flour on the
black market for heftier profits — more than enough to buy off the
underpaid inspectors appointed by the government to monitor subsidized
bread prices. Consequently, affordable bread for the truly needy
becomes scarcer, and with no serious monitoring efforts by the state,
the process becomes cyclical, eventually culminating in a bona fide
crisis.
Government mismanagement of simple
provisioning, not uncontrollable market dynamics, led to this current
state of affairs — bread queues at government bakeries, while flour
meant to feed the poor is sold on the black market to make expensive
pastries. And with nearly half of Egyptians living below the poverty
line of $2 a day, mismanagement of their bread supply was enough to
catalyze a truly national movement, despite its being suppressed by
security forces.
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