The Sweetness is Slipping from Egyptians’ Lives

If you stopped by the store to pick up sugar lately and didn’t find any, you aren’t the only one: sugar is in short supply these days. We’ve talked to people from Cairo to Giza who haven’t been able to track down this oh-so-necessary staple nearly as easily as usual. In Zamalek, one mother of two went to four shops before she found any, and a retiree in Maadi couldn’t find it at his usual shop.

We checked Metro in Zamalek yesterday and were only able to find imported cane sugar. It’s an issue outside the capital, too: problems have been reported in Daqahliya, Sharqiya and Minya.

It’s not only consumers, either. Domty’s new juice factory in 6th of October City is facing issues over the sugar shortage, CEO Mohamed El Damaty told Al Mal. The company was hoping to scale up production, but “sugar has become like the USD, expensive and hard to come by,” said Damaty. Traders speaking to Al Borsa said the widespread shortage has caused prices to spike as high as 9.5 EGP per kilo.

We’re hoping to find sugar stocked as usual soon (in coordination with the military, Egypt has contracted for the import of 420k tons of sugar), but until then we might have to stick to two spoons of sugar per cup of tea. We can’t imagine the pain for those of you we like your sugar with a side of tea!

WE SAID THIS: Knowing how much of our lives depend on sugar, we hope this gets solved soon – or 90 million people are going to be very unhappy!