A woman walks out of a currency exchange office displaying a giant US dollar banknote in a Cairo neighborhood on August 24, 2022. (AFP / Khaled DESOUKI)
Limited bank withdrawals, rationing and for the nutritional benefits of chicken feet: in Egypt, there is a shortage of dollars 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 for three,” Rehab, 34, told AFP.
“My husband earns 6,000 pounds per month” (230 euros), “before we lasted 30 days with that, today we go into the red following ten”, she continues.
A man walks past a chicken for sale in a store in Cairo on March 17, 2022. ( AFP / Khaled DESOUKI )
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” –
Market in Ataba Square, in the heart of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on October 24, 2022 ( AFP / Khaled DESOUKI )
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 his 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 free up dollars: currently, seven billion dollars worth of products are blocked in the ports, according to the authorities.
And misinformation thrives: Chinese brands Realme and Oppo and even McDonald’s are regularly given away on social media.
Customers shop in a small public market in a town on the Sinai Peninsula on March 20, 2022. ( AFP / Khaled DESOUKI )
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 Amr Adib got angry in his talk 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 dollars in reserve once morest 41 in February – including 28 in the form of deposits from the allies of the Gulf – and its external debt has more than tripled in 10 years at 150 billion euros.
– “Don’t get involved” –
In March, then in October, Cairo devalued its currency. On Wednesday, the pound lost more than 8% once more. In less than ten months, it will have fallen by almost 70%.
And for the experts, all the lights turned red when two public banks announced on Wednesday to issue certificates of deposit with 25% interest over one year.
Despite everything, Egypt remains one of the five countries most at risk of not repaying its external 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 construction site of the “Iconic Tower”, in the “new capital” of Egypt east of Cairo, August 3, 2021 (AFP / Khaled DESOUKI)
Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir offered a solution: make tourists pay for the train in dollars.
“I need dollars to pay for imported trains. It suits tourists and me too,” Kamel al-Wazir explained recently.
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 debt protects his income and his property and finances mega-projects which bring him big” since most of the major works are entrusted to military engineers , he adds.
Far from new towns and gleaming electric trains, Rehab just wanted to buy her daughter a coat for the winter.
“But at 1,000 pounds, I had to give up,” she says, her eyes misty.
