Now fry vermicelli in oil, then add rice. Add boiled water and when most of it is absorbed, leave it for slow cooking.
As for rice, in contrast to lentils, Egypt produces more than it consumes: out of 4.5 million tons of produced rice, Egypt consumes 3-3.2 million tons, the remaining 1.3-1.5 million tons being available for export, as it is the only crop where the feddan produces as much as 4 tons.
Recently, the Egyptian government decided to ban the export of all kinds of rice, in order that local needs are met locally.
This did not prevent the price of rice increasing to over EGP 6-7 from EGP 3.5-4 in February, Idrees told Ahram Online, while year-on-year, rice prices increased by almost 60 percent in July 2016, according to the monthly report issued 10 August by CAPMAS, the state statistics body.
In an attempt to ease the dollar squeeze, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) weakened the pound by 13.5 percent against the dollar in March, to register EGP 8.78. However, the rate in the black market has exceeded EGP 12.
As Egypt seeks a $12 billion IMF loan to curb its 11.5 percent budget deficit and fix the dollar shortage needed for imports, local currency is expected to be devalued further, hence leading to further price increases.
The foreign reserves in the most populous Arab nation have been more than halved since 2011 to reach $15.5 billion in July, according to the CBE .
Why did the price of rice increase?
The problem is that traders started in March storing large amounts of rice, especially ahead of high demand in Ramadan, hence raising the price of rice by manipulating the market.
The Ministry of Supply did not have enough reserves, which resulted in a rice shortage.
“There wasn’t enough space to store the rice, but we established 17 new silos and 105 new bards,” ministry spokesperson Mahmoud Diab told Ahram Online.
The ministry then conducted campaigns to hit traders by pumping at least 25,000 tons of rice into the market and seizing around 10,000 tons of rice from traders, selling it at a price of EGP 4.5 per kg to reduce prices that had soared to EGP 10 per kg in some places (up about 50 percent).
“In the upcoming harvest season, the ministry wants to buy a million tons from local producers as strategic reserves for the end of the year,” Diab said.
Other than monopoly, another problem is related to the new system of smart cards, with complaints of shortages in food supplies subsidised by the government.
“The government removed rice [and oil] from the supply cards, to which 73 million Egyptians are subscribed and consume 100,000 tons of rice per month. The result is, 74 million people went to the market to buy from traders, hence an increase in prices due to high demand,” Noureldin says.
Supply ministry spokesperson Diab explained that everything is available on smart cards; the choice is for the consumer to decide which products to buy.
According to the new supply system, the consumer has a card of EGP 16 to buy a variety of commodities, including oil and rice, in contrast with the previous system where every card would give access to 2 kg of sugar, 2 kg of rice, 1.5 kg of oil, and so on.
