Northern Syria -

After waiting for more than 5 hours, the government employee Halim al-Halabi (a pseudonym) returned without getting his daily bundle of bread, after the bakery closed the sale windows in front of dozens of buyers in the city of Aleppo, in areas controlled by the Syrian regime, announcing that the amount of flour had run out. early.

Al-Halabi was forced to be absent from his job for a whole day, after he went out in the early hours of the morning to the bakery near his home, organizing in a long queue that included dozens of city residents, in order to obtain a bundle of bread at a price subsidized by the government of the regime.

Al-Halabi says - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that most of the city's bakeries are closing early due to the expiration of the quantities of flour provided to them, which forces the people to buy bread from the black market and street vendors at a price exceeding two thousand Syrian pounds (equivalent to $5), which is almost 8 times The price is from the oven.

Al-Halabi expressed his astonishment at the regime’s government fighting the itinerant bread sellers, at a time when it is not able to secure sufficient quantities of flour to operate the bakeries and sell the families’ daily need for bread.

The scene of the Aleppo citizen is a scene that is frequently repeated by thousands of Syrian citizens.

wheat scarcity

The bread crisis has recently worsened in most regions of Syria, and the crisis has increased and reached its most severe in the areas under the control of the Syrian regime, whose cause is attributed to the massive shortage in wheat quantities, as a result of the siege on the country and the global scarcity of wheat.

Earlier, the Director-General of the Syrian Grain Corporation at the regime’s government, Abdul Latif Al-Amin, confirmed that the corporation had received in the current season 500,000 tons of wheat from farmers, pointing out that it only covers the needs of the local market for only 3 months.

Al-Amin said - in statements to the government newspaper "Tishreen" - that the need for the regime-controlled areas of wheat amounts to about 2.2 million tons annually, noting that the shortage of flour is compensated through import.

Despite his acknowledgment of the shortage, the director of the Syrian Grain Corporation denies reports of a reduction in the bakeries' allocations of flour, stressing that all the provisions are distributed to the bakeries, and that some of them demand an increase in their allocations, which is refuted by the residents' complaints.

What is the solution?

In the face of the wheat shortage crisis, sources in the Ministry of Internal Trade in the regime's government draw 3 scenarios regarding the bread crisis, the ministry could choose one of them in the next stage.

The sources told "Al-Baath" newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Baath party in Syria, that the three scenarios are to reduce the weight of a bundle of bread from one thousand and 100 grams to one thousand grams, or to reduce the family allowances that they receive through the smart card, according to the number of family members.

As for the last scenario, which can be implemented, it is to increase the price of a bundle of bread to 300 Syrian pounds instead of 250 pounds.

The sources indicate that the measure that the ministry will take most likely will be to reduce the weight of the tie;

"This allows it to save about 400 tons of flour per day, in addition to raising the price of a bundle to 300 pounds."

stolen wheat

The Syrian economic analyst, Younis al-Karim, attributes the shortage of wheat in Syria and the regime-controlled areas to multiple reasons, most notably the lack of water and fuel, the high exchange rate of the dollar, and the conflict between the forces controlling Syria to obtain wheat.

Al-Karim said - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that the Syrian regime may resort to buying wheat grains that Russia seized from Ukraine at very high prices, to confront the crisis of running out of bread wheat, adding that Moscow is trying to turn Syria into a platform for the sale of wheat and Russian products and activate an agreement signed with Damascus. 2015.

Al-Karim pointed out that one of the expected solutions is for the regime to seek aid from humanitarian organizations to secure part of the daily bread needs of the population in areas under its control.

The economic analyst considered that the bread shortage crisis is not only related to the scarcity of wheat, it is related to the shortage of fuel, transportation fees, military operations, and the large amount of wastage in bread, pointing out that estimates indicate the spoilage of 15 million loaves of poor-quality bread.