Food Basket: Ministry celebrates "success" what the public deems "failure"

Shafaq News/ The Iraqi government's attempts to revive the ration card appear to be in vain, even after announcing what it called the food basket to avert the harsh criticism to corruption suspicions lurking around it and the poor items it contains.

With few additions to the ration card, or what is now known as the food basket, Iraqis were astonished to receive half the amount of its main items, such as sugar, or receive it incomplete and missing rice, beans, or all the commodities together.

On May 4, 2021, the cabinet approved the Ministry of Trade's proposals on organizing a  food basket that the Ministry of Finance funds as a part of the 2021 Budget.

However, many citizens complained that this basket is no less miserable than the previous ration cards, "The food basket distributed yesterday is no less miserable than the previous one. The only difference is its name," said Um Fatima, a resident of Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood.

"The Ministry of Trade claims that it added two items in the new food basket, beans, and tomato paste. However, the beans, according to the processor, were not received from the Ministry's stores. The same applies to rice. Moreover, sugar has been reduced from two kilograms per person to one kilogram," Um Fatima added.

Jawad al-Hasani said that his family has not received any of the ration card's items properly since 2003, "we always receive it under-numbered."

"The ration card's items' distributor claims that he will hand all the items over to us once he receives it from the stores, but what he says is nothing but a dead letter," al-Hasani continued.

"The ration card's commodities are important for all the Iraqis due to high prices, low salaries, and lack of jobs in Iraq," al-Hasani added, calling on the government to, "convert the food basket into a monetary allowance and distribute it to citizens instead of these troubles and corruption that have plagued the ration card."

The ration card system has been in place in Iraq since 1991 to mitigate some of the repercussions of the economic embargo imposed on it, under UN Security Council Resolution 661 of 1990.

For her part, Nada Shaker Jawdat, a member of the parliamentary economic and investment committee, told Shafaq News agency that the monetary allowance is the best solution to the problem of ration card to eliminate corruption.

"The role of the Ministry of trade should be limited to monitoring the market, stabilizing economic security, and establishing cooperative markets that maintain market stability and prevent the rise in commodities' 

prices," Jawdat said.

She also added, "The cash allowance will eliminate the confusion over contracts to import these commodities, as well as prevent leaking hard currency outside the country."

"The amount of the cash allowance is set in a meeting of the cabinet, the council of economy, and some  parties representing the people to agree on a specific price," Jawdat said, "the Ministry of Trade has developed the cash allowance as a third option to solve the ration card problem."

"The experience of the food basket cannot be judged from the beginning. Rather, we must wait for the idea to mature and whether the Ministry will continue to distribute the specified quantities in the specified dates, or will it decline over time, similar to the ration card," economist Dhurgham Mohammed Ali told Shafaq News agency.

"The quality of the distributed materials and the stability of their quantities is a measure of success; if distributed regularly and at specific times," he said.

"Any reduction in quantities or shortcomings within the basket will make it a failed project added to the failures of the Ministry of Trade for the past years in the ration card file," Ali added.

The Ministry of Trade rejoiced the "successes" through the food basket it had launched over the past period.

"The food basket project has begun to achieve positive results at the level of public opinion. People are satisfied with it because of its quality and diversity, as it includes seven materials," ministry spokesman Mohamed Hanoon told Shafaq News agency.

"In previous years, the ration card's four commodities were distributed intermittently and by four to five months per year," he admitted.

"The ministry has entrusted the task of importing these materials to private companies, thus moving away from the issue of corruption in contracts, while the ministry's work is limited to examining, scrutinizing, and monitoring its processing," Hanoon said, "unqualified items are not received from these companies, and therefore we have eliminated the problem of thousands of tons of damaged food in stores."

"The distribution of the food basket for the first month was experimental and some materials' delay, such as rice, will be avoided in the future," Hanoon continued, "It is the citizen who decides the quality of these materials, and they will be removed from the basket if they are not good."

Under the ration card system, the state distributes basic food to citizens monthly, which fills part of their needs. Still, the card's items have decreased from 13 items distributed monthly before 2003 to four, and often only two or three items.