"Some basic commodities have skyrocketed, and many families even no longer afford to make a purchase," Hassan Abdul-Rahman, a 43-year-old garbage collector in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, told Xinhua.
The prices of some basic commodities like rice and tomatoes have doubled, he said, adding that he has been looking for an extra night job in order to bring food on the dining table for his three kids.
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"I am not an economist, but the situation is very difficult ... we are in urgent need of solutions to the crises, especially the poor and low-income people," he added.
Egypt's annual headline inflation rose to 21.9 percent in December 2022, up from 19.2 percent a month earlier and 6.5 percent in December 2021, according to Egypt's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.
Since early 2022, the Egyptian economy, which had yet to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, was dented by surging global food and oil prices following the Russia-Ukraine conflict, given that the most populous Arab country is also the world's largest importer of wheat, most of which came from the two warring countries.
A series of U.S. interest rate hikes have also battered the Egyptian economy, making hot money flee from Egypt and other developing countries which have to devaluate their currencies, Abu Bakr al-Deeb, an advisor to the Cairo-based Arab Center for Research and Studies, told Xinhua.
Within a year, the Egyptian pound experienced three devaluations against the U.S. dollar.
On March. 21, 2022, Egypt's central bank devalued the pound by nearly 17 percent again the U.S. dollar, before curbing some losses. This was followed by another 14.5-percent devaluation of the pound on Oct. 27 last year and a drastic single-day decline of 13 percent in early January.
Egypt's devaluation moves were endorsed by the International Monetary Fund, which approved in December 2022 a 3-billion-dollar loan to Egypt over the next 46 months as a support package.
For Marwa Hamid, a grocer living in Cairo's Helwan district, the situation is no better than that for Abdul-Rahman.
"Sales decreased significantly over the past months due to the notable increase in commodity prices, hurting my financial status," the middle-aged lady told Xinhua.
"The good thing is that the government is trying to control the increase and sell some basic commodities at its outlets at affordable prices," she said.
She was referring to the Egyptian government's move to open more such outlets countrywide from January to the end of the Muslims' holy month of Ramadan in late April this year.
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