The economic impact of Thursday's float of the EGP continued to dominate the airwaves last night, with the nation’s talking heads doing their best to put a positive spin on events and officials trying to assure the public on rising prices and the availability of goods.

Nobody wanted to talk about the coming wave of inflation: Some analysts are expecting the headline inflation rate to reach 20% by the end of this year on the back of the EGP float, but you wouldn’t have known it from last night’s talk shows, which avoided discussing the coming squeeze on living standards.

Instead, everyone wanted to talk about how prices will fall: Ayman Hossam El Din, head of the Consumer Protection Agency, told Kelma Akhira that prices could begin falling in the next three to four months (watch, runtime: 3:05). The deputy chairman of the Egyptian Poultry Association, Tharwat El Zeiny, said that chicken prices won’t rise any further because … chicken prices are already high.

Price controls on sugar? Abdel Moneim Khalil, head of internal trade at the Supply Ministry, floated the idea of putting price controls on sugar in the event of price gouging (watch, runtime: 5:27).

A new Moody’s report provided another source of positivity: Kelma Akhira’s Lamees El Hadidi dedicated a segment to explaining a new Moody’s report out yesterday which said that the decision to devalue the currency will improve Egypt’s funding situation. Amr Hassanein, chairman of rating agency Meris, joined El Hadidi to discuss the report (watch, runtime: 7:16).

MEANWHILE- The Madbouly government struck an optimistic note on wheat supplies just days after a key global wheat pact went belly up: The state is moving to reassure the public that the country’s wheat supplies will not be threatened if exports of Ukrainian wheat are suspended long term. Ahmed El Attar, head of the Agriculture Ministry’s quarantine authority, said that the government has taken “pre-emptive steps” to secure wheat supplies and has built up reserves of strategic commodities (watch, runtime: 3:04). This came a day after Russia pulled out of the UN-brokered agreement that allowed Ukraine to resume grain exports, threatening to cause a shortage of wheat and reignite the global food crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine.

No, bread subsidies haven’t changed: The government refuted reports it plans to lift bread subsidies and replacing them with cash support for the neediest. The news got air time on state TV’s El Tasea (watch, runtime: 7:57) and Masaa DMC (watch, runtime: 1:33).

Yes, but: The government is looking at ways of reforming bread subsidies, with Supply Minister Ali El Moselhy earlier this month calling on MPs to examine ways of scaling back the program. It’s not clear whether reform to the program is a requirement of the recently-agreed USD 3 bn IMF loan, but we should find out more on the conditions when the executive board meets to discuss the agreement in December.