A study of the market intermediaries and middlemen in the system
Oday Kamal, University of Oxford
The baladi bread subsidy is one of the most contentious subsidy systems in Egypt. It has played a key role in the country’s political economy throughout its modern history. From the 1977 bread riots witnessed under President Sadat to the continual bread shortages experienced under President Morsi in 2013, local heads of state have repeatedly grappled with the issues underlying the distribution of baladi bread in Egypt.
This book represents a concerted effort to collate studies in the academic literature and insights from fieldwork data to analyse the role of intermediaries in the baladi bread supply chain.
The findings reveal that improvements to the administration of the baladi bread subsidy regime are guided not by consumer politics but rather the power of a small group of middlemen in the system who are able to obstruct or facilitate this process.
