Algeria: Potato prices to normalise in May
They started out at 40 dinars per kilo and are now selling for 120 dinars ($0.50-$1.89 US).
"The price of potatoes has never reached these heights before. We were used to seeing cyclical increases of 20 to 30 dinars (per kilo), but then prices would come down again after a few days. This rise has continued and it's beyond all comprehension," said Makhlouf, a public-sector worker.
Average annual prices went from 50 dinars per kilo in 2007 to 35 dinars in 2008, 43 dinars in 2009, 36 dinars in 2010 and 39 dinars in 2011.
The agriculture ministry has pointed to the bad weather, which pushed back the season, as the reason for the price hikes.
"This rise is continuing because the harvest hasn't fully begun yet. This has been factored into the price of the product by some producers who supply the market with small quantities before the harvest begins in earnest," the ministry claimed.
The total area sown at the end of the 2010-11 season is the same as that sown in the previous season, 55,000 hectares, of which nearly 5,000 hectares were reserved for early produce.
Hadj Ladjali, the president of the Chamber of Agriculture in the province of Ain Defla, said that speculators have exploited the bad weather to keep prices high.
"The current rises in the prices of potatoes, which are one of the most widely consumed agricultural products in Algeria, is due to speculation during a lean period between the end of the late autumn harvest and this season's harvest, which takes place from mid-April to mid-June," he said.
To compound an already bad situation wholesalers are holding strikes in some places to protests over unlicensed potato vendors who have been selling goods at the entrance to the markets.
However, the trend should reverse at the end of this month according to the spokesman of the General Union of Algerian Traders and Artisans (UGCAA), Hadj Tahar Boulenouar, who said at the beginning of this week that potato prices will fall by 40 per cent because "large quantities of potatoes from the regions of Mostaganem, Relizane, Ain Defla and the coast will begin to be collected from the end of this month onwards and then put on sale."
He added that efforts are being made to "organise distribution, stabilise prices and protect people's purchasing power" and blamed the sudden price rise on a "production shortfall due to the recent bad weather which affected the quantity and quality of harvests."
Agriculture Minister Rachid Benaissa has ruled out the import of potatoes, saying that it will damage the industry and will not help lower prices. He said the price of imported potatoes would be somewhere between 70 and 75 dinars per kilo.
"This price is not competitive enough to beat the market price, and what's more, imported potatoes are of lower quality because they have been stored for six months," the minister said.
"Quantities of potatoes are coming onto the market every day and prices should get back to normal by the end of May when the harvest reaches its seasonal peak," Benaissa concluded.
Source: www.magharebia.com
