Egypt's inflation rate rises in May as food prices soar: CAPMAS

Egypt's annual headline inflation climbed in May to hit 33.7 per cent compared to 15.3 per cent in the same month last year, state-run Al-Ahram news outlet reported, citing an official statement by the country's Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS).

The consumer price index (CPI) reached 174.1 points in May, marking a 2.7 per cent rise in comparison to April as per the assessment of CAPMAS, according to the statement released over the weekend.

May has also witnessed rising prices of grains, and in turn, bread by 4.6 per cent, meat and poultry by 2.1 per cent and fish and seafood by 9.8 per cent.

The prices of oils also soared by 5.9 per cent over the same period, while the value of housing, water, electricity, natural gas and fuel surged by 6.4 per cent.

Over the past months, the prices of basic commodities, mostly imported, witnessed unprecedented hikes which put low and average-income households in Egypt in a dire situation.

The Egyptian economy has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian-Russian war, factors that further disrupted global markets and hiked oil and food prices worldwide.  

The country’s local currency has been struggling against the US dollar leading prices to further skyrocket.  One US dollar is valued at about 30.90 Egyptian pounds at the time of publishing.

Egypt is also the world's largest wheat importer, most of which is imported from Russia and Ukraine at a time when the country's supply is subject to price changes in the international market.