01:58 AM Sunday, August 13, 2023
Books and pictures – Mahmoud Al-Toukhi:
Fatima Abdel-Alim stood in front of a bookstore in the Faggala market in central Cairo, and she had 700 pounds in her pocket to buy the external books that her daughter would need, as she rose to the third secondary grade, but the recent price hike disappointed her: “By receiving my husband’s pension of 1500 pounds, I bought half of them requests for the house and came because I buy the books my daughter needs, but I only have 3 books.”
The recent increases in the prices of foreign books left a state of stagnation in foreign bookstores in the Faggala market, as some parents tended to buy used books from the Azbakeya wall area or photocopy new books, according to Mina Mohsen, owner of the Eastern Bookstore.
Mohsen explains that prices increased by 100% over the same period of the last academic year, and by 40% over the second semester, due to the high prices of printing supplies during the customs seizure period in March and April. The total prices of books for a middle school class amounted to about 700 pounds: “People are confused and books are divided and you don’t buy them all at once.”
Mohsen points out that the change of some curricula is one of the main reasons for the high prices of foreign books, as it leads to the loss of merchants and publishing houses to hundreds of copies that were printed or remaining from previous years: “90% of the books are in the market except for the sixth grade because of the change curricula for some subjects.
The prices of external books for the primary stage start from 110 pounds, and 120 pounds for the preparatory stage, and from 140 to 220 pounds for the first and second grades of secondary school, while the prices of books for the third secondary grade ranged between 180 and 300 pounds. Mohsen says: “These are the prices of books currently in the market.” But the books of language schools have not yet been published, most of them.
Mohsen asserts that the decline in the demand for foreign books is prompting merchants to think of “burning prices”; For fear of the losses caused by not selling it: “If a book, for example, costs 200 pounds and is printed on the book, we will have to reduce it and sell it for 190 or 180 pounds.” Bookstores offer discounts and offers with a discount ranging from 5% to 20%, and the percentage varies from one bookstore to another.
Despite the big jump in the prices of external books for all educational levels, which merchants and bookstore owners in Faggala complain about, only the consumer bears the difference in prices, according to Barakat Safa, deputy head of the Stationery Division at the Chamber of Commerce, who attributes the increase in demand for external books to the early start of private lessons. And the students’ cessation of going to school: “Students have become completely dependent on private lessons, in which the two lessons impose the purchase of external books.”
Safa believes that it is unreasonable for a decrease in the prices of foreign books or publications in general to occur after customs releases of printing supplies such as paper and inks. Because of the fines that importers faced as a result of the detention of goods in the ports: “These fines are paid by the importer in dollars that he buys from the black market, with a large difference from the official price, and foreign shipping lines companies benefit from them, not Egypt.”
Egypt imports between 280 and 300 thousand tons of paper annually. To bridge the gap between consumption of 450,000 tons and domestic production, which does not exceed 170,000 tons.
Fatima Abdel-Aleem plans to return again to the Faggala market to buy the remaining books if she can afford them, or she goes to Sur Al-Azbekia to buy used copies of some of them, and she may do the same as others who resorted to photocopying new books in a private library.
2023-08-12 22:58:00
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