BBC News, 21.7.2012
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| اكثرية الخضار والفواكه هي الاخرى مستورده |
Iraq spends around $5bn (£3.18bn) annually to distribute food to
its population.
On the western bank of
the Tigris in north Baghdad stands a rare relic of British rule in Iraq - a
silo built during World War II to feed British soldiers.
Right next to it
stands a taller structure, built in 1962 by the Soviet Union, as Iraq flirted
briefly with communism.
Several trucks stacked
with bags of rice and wheat drive past to empty their loads, and all around
flocks of pigeons chase after fallen grain.
The site belongs to
the state-owned Grain Board of Iraq, which imports rice and wheat for distribution
to the population.
About 12,000 tonnes of
wheat are stored here - a fraction of the quarter of a million tonnes Iraq
imports every month.
And the vast majority
of Iraqis receive their share almost for free.
For more than two
decades, the Iraqi government has administered a massive public distribution
system, under which all citizens are entitled to receive essential items for
only symbolic payment.
The Iraqi government
says it wants to reform the system, but its efforts have run into difficulties.
Fears
for future
The system was put in
place after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq following its
invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
More than nine years
after the sanctions regime was lifted, Iraq still spends around $5bn (£3.18bn)
a year to distribute food to its population.
The items include
sugar, cooking oil, and baby milk formula for families with infants. The Grain
Board is responsible for rice and wheat, which is then made into flour before
being handed out.
"We deal with
more than three million tonnes of wheat every year," a press officer at
the Grain Board told me proudly.
But some of it seems
to be going to waste. Every citizen is entitled to 9kg (20lbs) of wheat a
month, and many people are not even claiming their share.
Hasan Ismail, the
director general of the Iraqi Grain Board, admitted there was a problem.
"Sometimes the
market does get saturated, especially with flour, because in cities people no
longer make their own bread. But people in the countryside consume all of their
rations, and they need them."
In distribution
centres, few complain about waste or abundance.
Daoud is a
construction worker in central Baghdad, and he's come to collect his monthly
share from the local distribution agent. "It's getting
less and less, year by year, and there's no variety. We get cooking oil,
sometimes rice, and flour. No tea, no washing powder, and no salt."
Daoud fears that the
distribution system is gradually fading away. "The whole thing
will be finished soon, and we better get used to it."
Means
testing
The government insists
it has no plans to end the system, only to introduce gradual reforms.
It says that those
with monthly incomes of more than 1.5m Iraqi dinars ($1,200; £764) are not
entitled to receive it any more.
But Mr Ismael says the
attempt to implement the new measure has already run into trouble. "It's not easy at
the moment in Iraq to track people's incomes. The government lacks databases of
people's incomes, and we can only track the incomes of those in the public
sector."
"There could be
some who work in the private sector with incomes of over 10 million Iraqi
dinars a month who still receive their share."
Tracking incomes could
be the least of the government's difficulties.
Like most subsidy
programmes all over the world, the system is politically difficult to reform,
and most politicians steer clear of pressing the issue
Despite allegations of
corruption and inefficiency, the public distribution system has been credited
with achieving food security for a large segment of the Iraqi population during
the past two decades.
Today 23% of Iraqis
live below the poverty line, and remain in desperate need of government
support. The challenge facing
the government is to strike the right balance between encouraging productivity
and less reliance on the state, while making sure not to jeopardise the food
security of those most in need.
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