During the last years of President Hosni Mubarak's rule, in Ataba Square in Cairo, where many popular markets for clothes, shoes, household appliances, etc. spread, a satellite TV reporter stood holding a microphone and in front of him a photographer holding a huge camera on his shoulder to stop a passer-by asking his opinion on the high inflation rates, but surprise and confusion I possessed the man for a few moments, after which he left on his own, and when a second and third person stopped, and the same question was repeated, the reaction was the same.

The reporter realized that there was a problem in communicating with the public, so he changed the wording of his question to “What do you think of the price hike?” Here, he found a rush by the audience to complain and review examples of these price hikes, and their incompatibility with income, to make it clear that the meaning of the term inflation was not known to the simple audience. of citizens.

And she stated that this snapshot took place during the Mubarak era, because since the second half of 2013, the entry of a television camera into a market to ask people about prices has become a risky matter, as the microphone holder and photographer are caught and taken to the nearest police station, and there it is confirmed who they work. If it was a governmental one, they would be released, but if it was otherwise, they would be detained.

Only wholesale prices without retail

Newspapers and websites, whether governmental or private, realized the significance of this, so they refrained from expanding on following the price changes of commodities, and some of them contented themselves with displaying wholesale market prices for vegetables, fruits and fish, which are prices that are completely different from what consumers find in retail markets. Considering that dealing with the issue of high prices is a diminution of the achievements of the ruling regime.

This avoidance increased, especially with the Egyptian ruler’s reproach to the media for dealing with the increase in the price of the egg dish, during his speech at the economic conference last October. Therefore, those who want to deal with prices from private websites rely on what is reported on the Cabinet Information Center website about the limit. The lowest and highest prices of commodities, in order to prefer safety and avoid going to popular markets.

With the Minister of Supply's reluctance to talk on satellite channels, his speech to one of the satellite channels affiliated with a sovereign authority prompted me to hear his point of view on what is happening in the markets, and his speech included asking a number of citizens about their opinion on prices, so they praised the prices offered by the consumer complexes affiliated with the Ministry of Supply, and I found them praising what The state is doing it in an exaggerated manner, and the same people continued to meet at intervals to ask them about different procedures that the ministry is taking.

I found a flow of responses from them that indicated a follow-up to the technical details of those decisions, and they mentioned information that I did not know despite my follow-up to the supply file, and here I realized that these are either employees of the Ministry’s agencies, or questions and answers were distributed to them by those who photographed them!

These are things that the viewer discovers easily, due to the persistence in praise and the lack of credibility, which reflects on the credibility of the program for them and perhaps the channel, which prompts them to quickly press the remote control to change the channel.

Newspapers contribute to widening the gap between the public and the inflation figures, as they publish in the headlines the monthly inflation figure, which is of course a low number due to the short period of measuring the change during it, and puts the annual inflation index due to its largeness within the body of the news so as not to anger the authorities

The sole government agency for calculating inflation

If the definition of inflation is simply that it is the general increase in prices, then the method for calculating that increase in the prices of goods and services is carried out according to Egyptian law through a government agency, which is the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics affiliated to the Ministry of Planning, and no other agency is allowed to calculate the inflation rate except for that authority. Even if it is one of the faculties of commerce affiliated to a public university or an official economic research center.

The employees of the Statistics Authority pass through the markets in villages and cities from the beginning of the month to the 28th of it to follow up on the change in prices. The month following the statement month.

An annual and another monthly index is announced that measures the changes that occurred in the prices of goods and services during that period, as the annual figure measures the changes that occurred between the month of the statement compared to the same month in the previous year, and the monthly figure measures the change between the month of the statement and the month preceding it.

However, with the announcement of the consumer price index, especially the annual one, which many metaphorically call the inflation rate, i.e. the percentage by which prices increased during the year preceding the month of the statement, this indicator does not find acceptance either among specialists or the general public who see that it is less than what they suffer from price hikes.

And that weak credibility is justified, as the official consumer price index is calculated by collecting data on 958 goods and services, and therefore the price changes that occur with those goods and services in the numerator of the ratio are divided by the denominator of the ratio consisting of 958 goods and services, which is the denominator that includes a lot Among the commodities that are priced by the government, and therefore their prices remain fixed periods such as subsidized municipal bread, prices of public buses and trains, local cigarettes and petroleum products, as well as old housing rents, which makes the figure resulting from the division little.

Claiming to spend 36% of income on food

Given that the general public, especially the poor - who make up a large percentage of the population - do not consume all of these goods and services, and their consumption is concentrated in a smaller number of goods and services, which they believe that the rates of increase in which were higher than what was stated by the consumer price index, they do not believe the official rate of inflation. .

Let us give an example during last January, when the detailed data for calculating inflation, within the Statistics Authority, showed that the rates of increase in prices for the same month of 2021 at wheat flour prices were 98%, pasta 91%, poultry 89%, onions 86%, and oil. Free food 85%, lentils 79%, cheese 70%, rice 65%, eggs 64%, beans 57%, fresh fish and free sugar 55%, tea 51%, milk 48%.

While they find that the annual consumer price index during the month was 26.5%.

It is related to this that the Statistics Authority, while following changes in 958 service commodities, has divided them into 12 sections, giving each section a relative weight, giving food and drink 35.9%, housing, water, electricity, gas and fuel 18%, health care 9%, transport and communications 6%, Clothes and shoes 4.7%, alcoholic beverages (liquor) and tobacco 4.6%, education 4.4%, restaurants and hotels 4.3%, furniture, household equipment and maintenance 4.1%, communications 2.3%, miscellaneous goods and services 4.5%.

Hence, whatever the rate of increase in food prices, its relative weight in spending, according to the statistical agency, is less than 36% of total spending, which reduces its impact on the total number of inflation, while practical reality and economic writings, whether in developing countries or in Egypt, indicate that spending on Food increases the proportion of the poor in their total spending, so that it can reach more than 70% of their total spending.

Their spending on some items such as clothing, shoes, household appliances, entertainment, and sometimes even health care is reduced or delayed, so that they can catch up with the increases in food prices. Hence, the reality of the situation among the majority of Egyptians, from the lower to middle segments, is not consistent with the relative distribution of spending on Sections of goods and services that the Statistics Authority deals with.

The central index excludes vegetables and fruits

Economists believe that each person has a different basket of goods and services that he consumes, and therefore he needs his own index to calculate his inflation rate. For example, there are about 35 million citizens who do not receive subsidized local bread, which costs 5 piasters, and they buy bread In the markets, its price starts from 1.5 pounds or more, and therefore their spending on bread will differ from those who get subsidized bread, whether it is enough for them or they buy an amount of unsubsidized bread besides it.

And this is repeated in many respects, as those who take public transport buses, during their daily commute to work, will spend less than those who travel in the more expensive microbuses.

And those who live under the old rent system at a lower value differ from those who live under the new rent system, who pay more.

And those whose children enroll in public schools will spend differently from those enrolled in private schools, as well as those enrolled in international schools in spending on education, which is repeated in health. Those who deal with rural health units differ from those who deal with private clinics or private hospitals.

During the period of President Mubarak, and in pursuit of a low inflation indicator that officials circulated through their statements locally and abroad, the Central Bank prepared an inflation index called basic, based on the data of the statistical agency, but it excluded from it commodities that are priced administratively, i.e. compulsorily priced, and it also excluded vegetables and fruits, considering that Their price changes are rapid, but vegetables and fruits represent a large and essential part of the spending of all Egyptians, which made it not reflective of the Egyptian reality.

Newspapers also contribute to widening the gap between the public and the inflation figures, as they publish in the headlines the monthly inflation figure, which of course is a low number due to the short period of measuring the change during it, and puts the annual inflation index due to its largeness in the body of the news so as not to anger the authorities, and because many of the public are satisfied with reading the headlines Especially economic news, their negative impression of the official inflation figures is taking hold.

Hence, for decades, all Egyptians resorted to easy popular measures to measure the change in commodity prices, including the price of meat, as they measure price changes by the changes that occurred in the price of a kilo of meat, and others measure the change in the exchange rate of the dollar over the different years, and others rely on the price of a koshari dish or a sandwich. Beans, falafel, or the price of eggs, as easy and well-known measures, through which price changes can be compared over a large number of years, unlike the inflation index, which measures the change in prices during one year.