"Managing Inflation"
That's a phrase that we are hearing from politicians and it is worse than useless in Egypt these days. It sort of pictures inflation as a bouncing ball that can be smacked down, but that's not right.
It’s the end of February and I went out to rustle up some cash for animal feed. I’m living on my farm largely for the animals that I live with. I have twenty horses, many of whom have been with me for more than twenty years, and were the base of our equestrian tourism business until the military decided that there were so many places we couldn’t go on horseback. Horses are expensive to feed under the best of circumstances, and these are definitely NOT the best of circumstances.
I keep my horses in what is probably the cheapest possible way in Egypt. There are no pastures to graze them on because most of this most spacious country is just dry sand. My paddocks for my horses were met with disbelief when I first built them twenty years ago because virtually everyone who has horses keeps them in boxes to save space. I put in a half acre sand paddock to allow them to play around and move naturally, and I put in two years studying equine nutrition to find out what locally produced forage or pellets would be best for a bunch of horses that were not being worked to death as many are here. They get dried berseem clover (drees baladi), some rice straw, fresh berseem clover or boma grass in the summer, some pellets that are mainly drees baladi with a little barley or corn mixed in. It clearly agrees with them since many of them are quite a bit over 20 years old and they are still working.
Lately, Egypt is having financial problems, or to be more accurate our fearless leader is having them since he opted some years ago to build the world’s highest tower inside the world’s largest city park inside the world’s possibly worst choice of how and where to build a new capital city while building roads, bridges, and highways all over the country, spewing out cement like a mad flying spaghetti monster. We have had to be very patient with the innumerable detours, the lack of any discernable road signs, and all the other facets of road building. But these have been built with loans from various countries, banks, or whoever loans money in quantities to construct all of this since around 2015 or so, and loans have this highly inconvenient aspect. People expect loans, or at least the interest on them, to be paid every so often. So people in power are on a treasure hunt for hard currencies of any sort to make the interest payments which is largely collected through exporting things from the motherland.
The desperate need for hard currencies (EU, USD, GBP, whatever) and the twists and turns to get some of the stuff here by borrowing (?!) from the IMF has created some interesting problems and 20 to 25% inflation without any appreciable rises in salaries. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s lust for dairies and race horses in their desert climates that grow hotter every day has led them to import the forage needed for cows and race horses, and we are the closest place to get it from. The hay that cost 900 LE about ten years ago jumped to 3000 LE per ton almost overnight roughly 7 years ago. Four months ago our hay jumped from 3300 LE per ton to 4500 LE per ton and now it is 5000 LE per ton for our cheaper berseem hay and up to 8000 LE per ton for alfalfa. The need for hard currency payments for hay means that the powers that be will encourage the export of forage needed in our own country, causing the prices of milk, meat, and cheese to skyrocket. What a mess. Egypt has incredible farmland that makes us pretty much self sufficient in fruits and vegetables (which are getting to be the only thing people can afford to eat anymore) but the push to export to bring in more hard currency means there are some scarcities occurring and the prices locally are being pushed up to export levels, that locals can’t afford at the best of times.
While money may not be the root of all evil, the need for hard currency is getting right up there.