The Food Industries Holding Company again hiked the price of sugar for industry to EGP 11,000 a tonne from EGP 10,000 following last week’s increases, eliciting an outcry from domestic food producers, Al Borsa reports. Food Industries Holding Company officials said that it will not move prices of sugar to merchants for the time being to protect consumers, pointing out that food producers have more leeway to absorb rising prices.

The flaw in that logic, of course, is that industries will pass those costs on to the consumer, and the price of refined sugar continues to spiral: Refined sugar manufacturer Savola is now selling the white stuff for EGP 12.50 per kg, while others remain in a range of EGP EGP 10.50-11.50 per kg. A number of sugar refineries said they would suspend operations, once their current stocks run out, until sugar cane harvesting season in January or February since they can’t sustain the additional cost of feedstock. Further up the production chain, Edita, Juhayna and Domty have all announced direct price hikes in one form or another.

The Federation of Egyptian Industries will meet with Prime Minister Sherif Ismail this week to discuss the sugar crisis and “unjustifiable” price increases. FEI officials said the price per tonne for industrial sugar has risen by 250% so far. “There is no clear reason to justify these ongoing increases in industrial sugar prices. Maybe the Holding Company has a supply gap that it is trying to fill at the expense of factories, or maybe it’s trying to turn a profit,” Edita chief Hany Berzi told Al Borsa. With the recent lifting of customs on sugar followed swiftly by these price increases, the Supply Ministry appears to be sending a message to the private sector: You want cheaper sugar, go import.

There could be something to that strategy, with Bloomberg’s Salma El Wardany writing that the sugar shortage should ease in the next few weeks after customs duties were scrapped. Alaa Ezz, secretary general of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce, told El Wardany that Egypt received 60k tonnes of sugar in two cargoes since the duties were lifted and that companies have also contracted 100k tonnes due to arrive “within weeks.” Jane Arraf produced a report on the sugar shortage for NPR’s Morning Edition in which she says the shortage started happening when the “government ran out of money to import sugar” and includes quotes from former deputy prime minister Ziad Bahaa El Din (runtime 03:31).