Ration Cards in Egypt: Targeting, Leakage, and Costs

Hebatallah Ghoneim

No 36, Working Papers from The German University in Cairo, Faculty of Management Technology

Abstract: Huge public deficits set a restructuring of the subsidy system at the forefront of Egyptian public policy reforms. This generates a great tension to the government specially that a quarter of the population is living in poverty and relies on food subsidies. As a compromise, the government has introduced a number of reforms in order to stop a further increase of the subsidy costs and to reduce the inefficiency of the system. One of the core elements of the reforms was the introduction of the smart ration card in 2010. Three years after the introduction, this economic policy paper assesses the success of this reform by assessing the targeting effect, the leakage situation, and the cost effectiveness of the smart ration card. The analysis is based on a number of interviews and on a questionnaire, which was distributed in the Cairo region.

Keywords: Food subsidy; social safety net; ration card; poverty; Egypt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H71 I38 O23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara
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