(Cairo) Limited bank withdrawals, rationing and advertising for the nutritional benefits of chicken feet: in Egypt, dollars are short and households can no longer fill their baskets.
Officially, inflation has reached 18.7%, but “the bread I used to buy for one pound is now three,” Rehab, 34, told AFP.
“My husband earns 6000 pounds per month” (331 CAN dollars), “before we lasted 30 days with that, today we go into the red after ten”, she continues.
With the majority of goods imported and an 8% jump in interest rates, everything has melted away: bread patties, falafels, bottles of oil, packets of legumes and even baskets at subsidized prices of the 70 million Egyptians considered “poor” and therefore holders of a ration card.
At the supermarket, signs warn: “maximum three bags of rice”, “no more than two bottles of milk” or “one bottle of oil”.
In the newspapers, the National Food Council praised “chicken feet, beneficial for the body and the wallet”.
Meat, “no longer an option”
Because meat – frozen and imported, half the price of fresh meat – is “no longer an option: it has gone from 85 to 150 pounds per kilo”, comments Rida, 55, who also refuses to give her opinion. name.
This matriarch struggles to feed her family of 13 people: “I am a civil servant and I do cleaning in a hospital, but even with two salaries there are plenty of things that I can no longer buy”, she explains to the AFP.
If prices are soaring, it is also because importers are struggling to release dollars: currently, 7 billion dollars of products are blocked in ports, according to the authorities.
And disinformation thrives: the Chinese brands Realme and Oppo and even McDonald’s are regularly given on the start on social networks.
Because, scalded by the haemorrhage of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, when investors took out billions of dollars, several banks are now limiting withdrawals in dollars abroad and have tripled the costs of using the bank card while that at money changers, greenbacks cannot be found.
Even the very pro-regime host Amr Adib got angry on his show: “At least let the Egyptians on vacation withdraw money for their taxi back! “.
But Cairo is taken by the throat: it has only $33.5 billion in reserves compared to 41 in February – including 28 in the form of deposits from Gulf allies – and its external debt has more than tripled in 10 years. at 150 billion euros (173 billion CAD.
“Don’t Get Involved”
Egypt has devalued its currency by 57%, but remains one of the five countries most at risk of not repaying its foreign debt according to Moody’s.
And the three billion dollars of the new IMF loan weigh little: the debt service alone for 2022-2023 amounts to 42 billion.
The Minister of Transport has proposed a solution: make tourists pay for the train in dollars.
“I need dollars to pay for imported trains. It suits the tourists and me too ”, explained recently Kamel al-Wazir.
But to release more money, the State wants to privatize all over the place. So much so that public opinion is worried that Egypt will lose its sovereignty over its jewel: the Suez Canal.
It is “not for sale” hammered the regime, but President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, he would like to dip into his income – to create a fund that he will manage himself.
“Money, I know how to manage it, don’t get involved,” he said recently.
For Stephan Roll, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Egypt is going into debt to “consolidate (its) authoritarian regime”.
“The army, on which Mr. Sissi relies, is the first beneficiary: external indebtedness protects his income and his property and finances megaprojects which bring him big” since most of the major works are entrusted to military engineering, adds he.
Far from new towns and gleaming electric trains, Rehab just wanted to buy her daughter a coat for the winter.
“But at 1000 pounds, I had to give up,” she says, her eyes misty.