Algerian government to bolster food supply in expectation of Ramadhan

Algeria has markedly boosted its cereal imports to face up to any untoward contingency ahead of the holy month of fasting of Ramadhan, when food prices traditionally shoot up on account of frenzied speculation practices by venal traders.

• This week, Algeria’s customs office announced that total food imports for the first half of 2011 are up 59 percent compared to same period in 2010.
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• Algeria also imported $2.04 billion (1.4 billion euro) worth of cereals, flour and semolina in the first half of the year, a 99 percent increase compared to 2010 figures, according to the customs statistics.
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• The drive for the beefed-up imports “is mostly of a political nature,” senior economic expert Abderrahmane Toumi told “Echorouk”.
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• “Faced with what’s happening in the Arab world, the Algerian government wants to avoid tension over bread and staple commodity products,” he explained.
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• Prices in the country’s markets typically rise when families stock up on basic goods ahead of the holy dawn-to-dusk fasting month of Ramadhan, which is to start on August 1st.
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• The government therefore wants to ease public discontent by importing enough foodstuffs to ensure costs remain reasonably affordable on the national market.
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• But, according to several analysts, the strategy is flawed and transient, partly because black market traders end up buying cereals at reduced costs in Algeria, and then take them in a clandestine way across the border to sell at markets around the region.
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• “Algeria lessens prices internationally, and countries like Mali, Niger Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania also profit from these subsidies through certain shadowy and money-grabbing networks,” said Reda Hamiani, who heads the Algerian FCE business forum.
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