Edita has its sugar back. High-profile snack-foods maker Edita disclosed yesterday that the Prosecutor General’s Office had ordered released some 2k tons of sugar ordered seized on Saturday by a government inspection committee. Operations were set to resume at its Beni Suef candy factory “within hours,” Reuters reported. Hani Berzi spoke for most all of us when he noted that, “We are grateful for the personal attention paid to our issue by a number of senior government officials, who clearly understand the definition of private property and of a free market economy.”

The government’s inability to nip the sugar shortage in the bud and concern about 11 November protests prompted the seizure, said Alaa El Bahay, Chairman and CEO of Mass Food and a board member at the Food Export Council. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Businessmen’s Association joined the Federation of Egyptian Industries and the Chambers of Commerce in denouncing raids on factories to seize sugar, calling the move “unstudied” and saying, Al Borsa reported.

While we have (so far) seen no sign that the 11 November protests are anything more than the bogeyman of the night-time talk show hosts, the government has been using the multi-party youth conference in Sharm El Sheikh as a platform to reassure the public that it will reassure lower income earners and the poor from inflation. The protests are the backdrop to much of the coverage of the issue in the domestic press. President Abdel Fattah El Sisi announced on Tuesday that the government will sell at half-price some 8 mn food packages containing sugar, rice, tea, lard and tomato sauce, AMAY reports. Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker promised to maintain electricity subsidies for lower-tier consumers, Al Shorouk added. Supply Minister Mohamed Ali El Sheikh, who did not attend the gathering, also promised to maintain subsidies under the smart card and bread point systems, the newspaper reports. Finance Minister Amr El Garhy chimed in by saying that the government is moving away from relying on grants and loans from abroad and instead is focusing on potential growth opportunities and funding in Egypt.

In other commodity-related news, state wheat buyer GASC made its largest wheat buy in two years. The world’s largest wheat buyer stocked up on 420k tons of Russian and Romanian, Bloomberg reported. “We think Egypt is playing catch up after cancelling / passing on multiple cargoes in September and late August,” Terry Reilly at Chicago broker Futures International told Agrimoney.com. Playing catch-up after the ergot flap may be part of it, but we think it has at least as much to do with the state padding its larder ahead of devaluation: Prime Minister Sherif Ismail announced last week that the central bank has allocated USD 1.8 bn for the buildup up of a six-month reserve of strategic supplies.