Administrative glitch caused bread shortage in Khartoum: minister
November 20, 2013 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese government has attributed the shortage of bread in the capital Khartoum in the past two days to an administrative glitch in the distribution of baking flour quotas and asserted that the problem has been resolved.
Taha chaired on Tuesday a joint meeting between Khartoum state authorities, ministry of finance, central bank, and the ministry of commerce to discuss the recent shortage in bread.
The state minister at the ministry of finance, Magdi Yassin, said in press statements following the meeting that an administrative glitch caused the shortage of bread over the past period and stressed that the problem was resolved, pointing that the government would continue subsidising wheat in order to ensure its availability.
He asserted that the strategic reserve of wheat amounts to 280.000 tonnes and pointed that the government imported 1.4 million tonnes of wheat since the beginning of the year.
Sudan currently imports more than 2 million tons of wheat annually at a cost of $900 million.
Sudanese government last September announced the second batch of cut on subsidies but however maintained its support to prices of the bread.
The lift of subsidies on basic commodities are part of an austerity plan aiming introduced in July 2012 to reduce the government spending by 1.23 billion billon dollar.
Over 200 Sudanese were killed during a series of protests last September against the austerity measures taken by the government after the loss of revenue caused by the South Sudan independence in July 2011.
The governor of Khartoum state, Abdel-Rahman Al-Khidir, pointed that the meeting decided to form a joint mechanism including the federal ministries of finance and commerce, central bank, and the government of Khartoum state to develop the necessary measures to prevent a repeat of the problem.
He said that flour mills have cut production leading to a %50 cut in quantities of bread flour because of the lack of information and mis-coordination with other services.
Al-Khidir further said that as of Monday, flour mills have delivered the full quota of flour to bakeries, demanding those who haven’t received their quotas to contact their distribution agents or state’s ministry of finance or the bakeries union.
He added that the joint mechanism made 14 recommendations to the Khartoum state regarding bread production, saying that those recommendations included weight, quality, price, and ways for developing baking industry.
Al-Khidir pointed that his state is responsible for wheat provision and distribution, saying that Khartoum state consumes 36.000 bags of wheat daily.
He said that bread price would be determined according to the recommendations of the recent workshop on bread and pointed that ministry of finance is currently studying those recommendations in order to determine the price within the coming few days.
Al-Khidir further stressed that Consumer Protection Society (CPS) which is the body responsible for monitoring prices was involved in all meetings in this regard.
The bakeries union secretary general, Adel Merghani, for his part, affirmed that bakeries received its full quotas on Tuesday and called upon all bakeries to work at full capacity, pointing that a mechanism was established to monitor bakeries.
He demanded the authorities of Khartoum state to implement the recommendations of the workshop, saying that it is the best way for the provision of bread.
(ST)