CAIRO: A quadrupling of the price of subsidized bread has made it harder than ever for Gamal Ahmad and millions of other Egyptians to get by.
The 64-year-old pensioner was struggling to make ends meet even before Eqypt’s government, facing a rising wheat import bill, increased the price of subsidized small loaves of flatbread for the first time in decades on June 1.
The loaves are available to more than 70 million people and are vital for the poorest. Even though they are still heavily discounted, the increase to 20 piasters ($0.0042) per loaf from five piasters is one that many households can ill afford.
“We can’t handle any more [price increases],” said Gamal, who is also worried about cuts to subsidized utilities that the government has announced.
“There’s still gas, electricity and water bills. All prices are rising,” he said.
The impact of the price increase will be felt by millions because the subsidized loaves are a staple for much of the population of about 106 million.
“Of course, the price hike impacts me,” pensioner Mohamed Abdelaziz said as he shopped for subsidized bread in central Cairo. “We are barely getting by.”
He said he had to keep on working to supplement his 2,000-pound ($42.46) monthly state pension and take care of three unmarried children.
Increasing the price of the subsidized bread was a politically sensitive decision that had been put off for years in a country where cheap bread is important for many because poverty is widespread.
The price had been kept steady since the 1980s despite repeated rounds of austerity reforms, with the government wary of facing a public backlash. An attempt to change the subsidy system sparked riots in 1977.
Instead of increasing the price, the government had previously tried to restrict eligibility and reduced the weight of the loaves.
About two-thirds of the population benefit from bread subsidies, which are based on income and include an allowance of five loaves per day.
The monthly bill for a family of four could now rise to 120 pounds from 30 pounds in a country where the minimum monthly wage is 6,000 pounds following a 50 percent rise in March.
HIGH INFLATION
The government acted now with annual inflation running at 32.5 percent in April after hitting 38 percent last September. Egypt also faces a large debt servicing bill and allowed a sharp currency devaluation in March, when it shifted to a flexible exchange rate system.
Egypt is often the world’s largest importer of wheat, and traders say the price change is not expected to change the quantity of state purchases in the short term. The collapsing currency and rampant inflation have caused the cost to the government of procuring wheat from abroad to surge.
Supply Minister Ali Moselhy says the new price represents just 16 percent of the cost of making the bread, which has been driven up by the weakening of Egypt’s currency and rising global wheat prices.
The government is allocating about 125 billion Egyptian pounds ($2.65 billion) for bread subsidies in its 2024/25 state budget, up from 91 billion last year, according to Moselhy.
Moselhy said the ministry had not received any complaints from citizens following the price increase.
The government says it is expanding the social safety net, but some of its critics question cuts to bread subsidies after the government has spent heavily on mega-projects, incurring more debt.
The state should instead prioritize cutting exemptions for military-owned companies that have long enjoyed financial privileges, said Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
The subsidized bread price increase will be “a significant hit for poor households,” he said.
Even if the move does not spur people to stage demonstrations following a crackdown on dissent and a ban on most public protests, it could fuel popular frustration over the economy, he said.
On Saturday, local TV host Lamis El Hadidy asked Moselhy why debt repayments took up 62 percent of budget spending while subsidies accounted for 11.5 percent.
Egypt had to repay its debts and “we are talking about our current reality and what to do tomorrow,” Moselhy replied.
Egyptians struggle with first bread subsidy cut in decades
https://arab.news/g4ww8
Egyptians struggle with first bread subsidy cut in decades
- The increase to 20 piasters per loaf from five piasters is one that many households can ill afford
- Increasing the price of the subsidized bread was a politically sensitive decision that had been put off for years
Gaza ceasefire deal unlikely in Biden’s term, WSJ reports citing US officials
WASHINGTON: US officials now believe that a Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is not expected before the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them.
Washington has previously said that 90 percent of that agreement to secure a ceasefire and release of hostages had been reached but gaps remained over Israeli presence in the Philadelphi corridor on Gaza’s border with Egypt and over specifics on release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Macron says ‘diplomatic path exists’ in Lebanon
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that a “diplomatic path exists” in Lebanon, where fears of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel spiked after deadly explosions of hand-held devices.
War is “not inevitable” and “nothing, no regional adventure, no private interest, no loyalty to any cause merits triggering a conflict in Lebanon,” Macron said in a video to the Lebanese people posted on social media.
Sweden charges woman with genocide, crimes against humanity in Syria
- Daesh ‘tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,’ prosecutor Reena Devgun says
DENMARK: Swedish authorities have charged a 52-year-old woman associated with the Daesh group with genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria — in the first such case of a person to be tried in the Scandinavian country.
Lina Laina Ishaq, who’s a Swedish citizen, allegedly committed the crimes from August 2014 to December 2016 in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed Daesh caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.
The crimes “took place under Daesh rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that Daesh attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden,” senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said in a statement.
“Women, children, and men were regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty, and extrajudicial executions,” Devgun said.
When announcing the charges, Devgun said that they were able to identify the woman through information from UNITAD, the UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq.
Daesh “tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,” Devgun said.
In a separate statement, the Stockholm District Court said the prosecutor claims the woman detained a number of women and children belonging to the Yazidi ethnic group in her residence in Raqqa and “allegedly exposed them to, among other things, severe suffering, torture or other inhumane treatment as well as for persecution by depriving them of fundamental rights for cultural, religious and gender reasons contrary to general international law.”
According to the charge sheet, Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, in her Raqqa home for up to seven months and treating them as slaves. She also abused several of those she held captive.
The charge sheet said that Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is accused of having molested a baby, said to have been one month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to make him shut up.
She is also suspected of having sold people to Daesh, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.
In 2014, Daesh stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.
The woman earlier had been convicted in Sweden and was sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, an area that Daesh then controlled.
The woman claimed she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on holiday to Turkiye. However, once in Turkiye, the two crossed into Syria and the Daesh-run territory.
In 2017, when Daesh’s reign began to collapse, she fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops. She managed to escape to Turkiye, where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime, with a Daesh foreign fighter from Tunisia.
She was extradited from Turkiye to Sweden.
Before her 2021 conviction, the woman lived in the southern town of Landskrona.
The court said the trial was planned to start Oct. 7 and last approximately two months.
Large parts of the trial are to be held behind closed doors.
Israel violated global child rights treaty in Gaza, UN committee says
GENEVA: A UN committee has accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza had a catastrophic impact on them and are among the worst violations in recent history.
Palestinian health authorities say 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign in response to cross-border attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7. Of those killed in Gaza, at least 11,355 are children, Palestinian data shows, and thousands more are injured.
“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chair of the Committee.
“I don’t think we have seen a violation that is so massive before as we’ve seen in Gaza. These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see,” he said.
Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, sent a large delegation to the UN hearings in Geneva between September 3-4.
They argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the West Bank and that it was committed to respecting international humanitarian law. It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas.
The committee praised Israel for attending but said it “deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations.”
The 18-member UN Committee monitors countries’ compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child — a widely adopted treaty that protects them from violence and other abuses.
In its conclusions, it called on Israel to provide urgent assistance to thousands of children maimed or injured by the war, provide support for orphans, and allow more medical evacuations from Gaza.
The UN body has no means of enforcing its recommendations, although countries generally aim to comply.
During the hearings, the UN experts also asked many questions about Israeli children, including details about those taken hostage by Hamas, to which Israel’s delegation gave extensive responses.
Spanish prime minister, Palestinian leader urge Mideast de-escalation
MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday called for a de-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.
“Today the risk of escalation is once more increasing in a dangerous way” in Lebanon, said Sanchez, at a news conference withvisitingPalestinianPresident Mahmoud Abbas.
“So we must again make a fresh appeal for restraint,for a de-escalation and for peaceful coexistence between countries, in the name of peace,” he added.
Sanchez was speaking to journalists after more than an hour’s talks with Abbas.
Since the Gaza war began, Sanchez has positioned himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause within the EU.
His socialist government has increasingly taken highly critical positions toward Israel’s conduct of itscampaignagainstHamas,rivalto the Fatah party.
“The international community and Europe cannot remain impassive in the face of the suffering of thousands of innocents, largely women and children,” he added.
Israel’s military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data provided by the Health Ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
Urging a two-state solution, long a cornerstone of international attempts to end the decades-long conflict, Sanchez said that a Palestinian nation “living side by side with the state of Israel” was the only way to “bring stability to the region.”
He pointed out that this is Abbas’s first visit to Spain since Madrid decided to recognize the state of Palestine on May 28. Ireland and Norway took the same decision in May. “Why is this a good thing? Because Palestine exists and has the right to have its state,” the premier added.
While Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, the Fatah party chaired by Abbas controls the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
