He attributed the high cost of Egyptian refined sugar to the government's obligatory policy of compelling SIIC to buy raw sugar from farmers at the fixed price of LE105. In return, the Ministry of Trade is committed to buy all delivered sugar from SIIC in refined form. However, Kholeif complained that the ministry has let SIIC down not only because it has announced that it will not now buy SIIC's unsold sugar, but also because it was never serious about taking decisive measures against dumping practices. In this respect, Kholeif openly accused the ministry of bowing to pressure from certain sugar importers. Firmly supporting Kholeif in his assessment, a number of parliamentarians urged the Ministry of Trade to impose countervailing duties to block future subsidised sugar imports.
Sugar is a crop of strategic and social importance, especially in Upper Egypt.
Public Sector Minister Atef Ebeid indicated that recent studies have shown that considerable amounts of substandard imported sugar have already found their way into the local market. For their part, Ministry of Trade officials disagreed with most of these arguments. Sayed Abul-Komsan, head of the foreign trade department at the ministry, charged that the accumulation of sugar in SIIC's stores is primarily due to the fact that SIIC itself insists on playing the dual role of sugar producer and trader at the same time. In this context, he charged SIIC itself with importing, during the first four months of 1998, as much as 24,000 tonnes of foreign raw sugar at a time of slumping international sugar prices. MP Khaled Mahmoud, a businessman, also took SIIC's Kholeif to task for the current ups and downs on the sugar market.