Abou Mohamed, an Egyptian doorkeeper who lives with his wife, is unable to get enough bread through his ration card. It only enables him to secure five subsidised loaves each.
He says this quota used to be sufficient when they were able to cook pasta or vegetables stuffed with rice. However, like Mohamed, many poor Egyptians eat bread as a filling carbohydrate-rich food because of its affordability.
[…] increase in prices was one of the important triggers of the Arab Spring.
Mohamed, who lives in the slum-ridden district of Beaulac in Giza, says there had been rumours that prices of both subsidised and unsubsidised bread were about to increase. True to form, the unregulated prices of bread went up by 50% on average last weekend, as a result of the wheat meltdown induced by the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Those who have three and four kids, what [can] they do?” Mohamed says, adding that he is b
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