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As the economy falters, Egypt’s police launch a ‘war on prices’

Egypt’s supply police launch a campaign to reduce the prices of some goods, with the government calling it a war on high prices.

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A woman shops for tomatoes at a vegetable market in Cairo, Feb. 6, 2011. — REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

On Nov. 1, as Egypt’s economy was moving into choppier waters, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi raised the issue of rapidly inflating prices in a televised public address. Promising quick action, Sisi pledged to “all needy people that, God willing, by the end of this month [November], the state will have lowered prices.”

According to the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies, Egyptians spend 40% of their income on food on average, and the country is widely known to be the world’s largest importer of wheat, in an economy heavily dependent on foreign production.

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