From restrictions on withdrawals from personal accounts outside Egypt, to rationing the amount of rice an individual can buy, to advertising campaigns about the health benefits of eating chicken legs, Egyptians are suffering greatly from the economic crisis their country is going through while it is burdened with debt.
Cairo’s cash reserves do not exceed $33.5 billion, including $28 billion in deposits from allied Gulf states. However, Egypt’s foreign debt has more than tripled in the last ten years, reaching $157 billion.
At the request of creditors, Egypt devalued its currency in 2022 by 57%.
In a country that imports most of its needs from abroad and in which interest rates rose by 8% in 2022, the impact was immediate, as the inflation rate reached 18.7%, according to official figures.
On Earth, housewives suffer. “The loaf of bread that I used to buy for one pound now costs three pounds,” Rehab told AFP at the exit of a bakery in downtown Cairo.
The 34-year-old woman, who refused to disclose her last name, added, “My husband earns six thousand pounds a month. We used to live thirty days from this salary, but today the money starts to come from the tenth day.”
Meat ‘no longer an option’
The size of loaves of bread, falafel patties, cans of edible oil and bags of legumes have been reduced again. The volume of products that were distributed at subsidized prices to 70 million Egyptians who are considered “poor” and have “ration cards” has also been reduced.
At the entrance to a large supermarket in Cairo, a sign warns consumers that one person cannot buy “more than three one-kilogram packages of rice or one five-kilogram package.”
In newspapers, the National Food Board praised “chicken legs good for the body and the budget.”
Because imported frozen meat, which is consumed by the lowest-income people because they cannot afford the price of fresh meat, “is no longer an option after its prices have increased from 85 to 150 pounds,” said Reda, who heads a family of 13.
This 55-year-old woman, who also refuses to give her last name, is doing everything she can to support the family. “I am an employee and work in a hospital, but even with these two salaries, there are many things that I cannot buy,” she explains.
And if prices are rising, one of the reasons is the inability of importers to obtain the necessary dollars from banks. According to government sources, customs currently hold goods worth about seven billion dollars.
Because of the foreign exchange crisis, which contributed to the exit of about 20 billion dollars from Egypt due to investors’ concern after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, most banks restricted withdrawals in dollars outside Egypt and raised the commission for using credit cards in purchases abroad from 3% to 10%.
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