2023-09-24 18:05:19
Article informationAuthor, Hisham Abdel Latif Role, Cairo – BBC
39 minutes ago
Egypt is witnessing an unprecedented rise in the prices of onions, a main ingredient in most of its citizens’ meals.
The price of a kilo of onions at the beginning of the harvest season, last March, was regarding 10 pounds (less than a quarter of a US dollar), while it currently exceeds 25 pounds (nearly a dollar).
The high price prompted Nadi Mahrous, a retired employee from one of the fruit and vegetable markets, to say that “onions have become more expensive than fruit.”
In an interview with the BBC, many Egyptians expressed their surprise at the crisis of high onion prices, especially since, according to official figures, Egypt ranks fourth in the world following China, India, and the United States, in terms of the volume of its annual production.
A government official who spoke to the BBC attributed the causes of the crisis to “the decrease in the area planted with the crop this year, in addition to the damage caused by climate change.”
Therefore, the Egyptian Council of Ministers decided, on Wednesday, to stop the export of onions for a period of 3 months, starting from October 1, 2023, until December 31, 2023, stressing that this comes “within the framework of controlling prices in the markets.”
The Council explained in a statement that it contacted the Ministry of Trade and Industry, which confirmed that the implementation of the decision had been postponed for several days, so that the delivery of previously agreed upon onion shipments might be completed.
“Greed of merchants”
Saber Mamdouh, an employee at a contracting company, says, “The harvest is abundant, but the main reason is the greed of merchants.”
He continued, “As a resident of a village on the outskirts of Cairo, he follows the practices that occur, which are that merchants buy the crop at a low price from farmers and store it to raise its price or to export it. Even if the crop is damaged in their warehouses, they do not reduce its price.”
Meanwhile, Inayat Syed, a housewife, said, “The prices of all vegetables have risen, whether onions, tomatoes, or cucumbers, and even eggs, meat, and poultry.”
She stressed that each merchant sells at a different price from the other, to the point that “we cannot buy enough to prepare a meal for our children,” adding that the solution, in her opinion, is for the supply police to intensify their campaigns on the markets.
For his part, Mahmoud Ahmed, who lives next to a vegetable market in the Al-Haytiya area in Giza Governorate adjacent to Cairo, said that he stopped buying onions and fruits because he wants to fight the greed of merchants by refraining from buying from them until their goods spoil, praising the government’s decision to stop exporting onions because that will force the merchants to Reducing prices, because they have no way to sell their goods except to Egyptians.
Two reasons for the crisis
Dr. Abdel Majeed Mabrouk, Head of the Onion Research Department at the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture, said in an interview with the BBC, “The area planted with onions in Egypt for the 2022/2023 season amounted to regarding 219 thousand acres, and the total production for this year reached 3.3 million tons.”
He explained that Egypt occupies fourth to fifth place among the top ten onion producing and exporting countries “due to the superiority of Egyptian varieties and the nature of its climate,” noting that Egyptian onions are exported to more than 50 foreign and Arab countries.
Regarding the reason for the rise in onion prices, Mabrouk said, “Farmers this year reduced the cultivated area as a result of the low price of onions last season, as the price of a ton reached 800 pounds (less than $25), and also because of the climate changes that affected Egypt, as the heat wave destroyed a large part of of crops.”
Mabrouk expected that the measures taken by the state, most notably stopping the export of onions, “will lead to a decrease in prices, and that the cultivated area for the new season will also increase due to the high price of the crop, and then average prices will return to their previous era, especially since Egypt is a self-sufficient country in onions.”
Onions are not alone
Last year, Egypt exported 280,000 tons of onions, while the total it exported this year until the decision to stop exports amounted to regarding 380,000 tons, as onions rank third in Egypt’s agricultural exports.
The prices of vegetables in general in Egypt increased by 98.4% last month compared to last year, while the official inflation rate in the country reached 39.7%, according to a report by the Public Mobilization and Statistics Agency.
This comes at a time when Egypt is witnessing a significant decline in the exchange rate of the pound once morest the dollar, in addition to a severe shortage of hard currency.
This indicates that the Egyptian government’s measures related to stopping exports will not be limited to onions alone, as Ahmed Ibrahim, media advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture, told the BBC, “Similar decisions will be taken with any strategic commodity, in the event that there are monopolistic practices or attempts by some.” “Merchants store them and manipulate their prices.”
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