The Sugar industry’s problems persist: Sugar refineries are buffing their figures ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Al Borsa reported. The companies will ask that cabinet increase the price at which the Food Industries Holding Company (FIHC) purchases refined sugar. The demand will come in the wake of a recent decision to hike the price of sugar for industry to EGP 11,000 a tonne (only one week after they had surged by nearly 43% to EGP 10,000 per tonne).

Businesses across the spectrum are pinning the crisis on the FIHC, which had been claiming the market was well-stocked and perhaps even oversupplied, Juhayna Food Industries Chairman Safwan Thabet told Ahram Gate. That’s the basis on which policymakers raised tariffs on white sugar imports, prompting a slowdown of imports. The spiraling cost of sugar is driving higher the prices of halawa, jams and juices, and several producers of sugar and sugar-based foods have already confirmed they would be gradually increasing the prices of their products as early as next week. Sugarcane growers are also unhappy, threatening not to grow crops in the next season if cabinet doesn’t approve raising the price at which the state buys sugarcane and sugar beet, Sugarcane Producers’ Association chief Youssef Abdel Rady told Al Borsa.