The general rise in the price of basic foodstuffs in Mali, on Sunday, August 7, prompted a special session of the Council of Ministers.
Malians are tired. Already living under a permanent security threat, they have been witnessing an “abnormal and unjustified” rise in the price of sugar, milk powder, edible oil, imported rice, among others. This situation has worsened “since the lifting of the embargo” by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) a month ago. Some actors, such as the Front Populaire Contre la Vie Chere (Popular Front against High Prices, FPCVC), have taken to the stage to denounce the powerlessness of the state.
Meeting yesterday in “extraordinary session,” the transitional government decided to take strong measures to relieve the population. Facing his colleagues and Colonel Assimi Goita, the President of the transition, the Minister of Industry and Trade, Mohamed Ould Mahmoud, said that “the prices agreed at the meeting of the National Price Council of April 06, 2022 are not respected” by traders.
“For example, the price of imported sugar, set at 600 CFA francs per kilogram, the maximum retail price, is now being sold abnormally and unjustifiably at up to 800 CFA francs,” he said, recalling that the government had granted a subsidy of 14 billion CFA francs to mitigate the impact of the crises linked to Covid-19 and ECOWAS sanctions on the Malian population.
Thus, to address the new situation, the government has decided to reallocate the subsidized quantities not executed at the customs cordon representing at least one and a half months of consumption to other economic operators. This reallocation, as far as sugar is concerned, may be accompanied by the allocation of an additional quantity corresponding to approximately one month’s consumption.
To compel traders to comply with the measures, it will also verify the mandatory display of prices of different products in places of trade and control compliance with conventions and regulations. The government invites, moreover, the population to systematically denounce the cases of violation of the prices of the subsidized products by calling the numbers placed at its disposal for this purpose.
In addition to these measures, the ‘Front Populaire Contre la Vie Chere’ proposed a plan to the transitional government on Tuesday, with “four main axes” to regulate the market for the benefit of Malian consumers and “gradually eradicate the high cost of living” in the country. “The first axis resolves the problems of exemption in Mali; the second axis addresses the problems of storage in Mali; the third axis is based on the third-party holding of basic necessities; the fourth axis is warrantage, which takes into account the problem of market disruption in grain stocks (millet, sorghum, rice, fonio, etc.),” the FPCVC explains.
ODL/cgd/fss/abj/APA