A 35% increase in the price of a loaf of bread to 500 Sudanese pounds has placed further pressure on households in Sudan, where purchasing power continues to decline and bakeries face soaring production costs driven by higher prices for flour, yeast and fuel, persistent power outages and the depreciation of the Sudanese pound against the dollar.
While residents are calling for government intervention to ease the burden of rising prices for this essential food staple, industry representatives warn that containing further increases will be difficult amid the ongoing war and deteriorating economic conditions.
Al-Tayeb al-Jaali, a bakery owner in Omdurman, attributed the latest increase in bread prices to rising production costs. He said a sack of flour now costs 190,000 Sudanese pounds, while a carton of yeast has reached 290,000 pounds. Daily labor costs have also risen by 25%.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Jaali said 1,000 liters of gas now cost 4.7 million pounds, while electricity outages exceed 12 hours a day, forcing bakery owners to rely on diesel to keep their businesses running at a daily cost of up to 400,000 pounds.
He argued that curbing bread price increases and easing the burden on both bakery owners and consumers would require government measures to stabilize the exchange rate and contain inflation amid the continued depreciation of Sudan's currency.
Declining Purchasing Power
Higher bread prices are affecting households and businesses that rely on bread to serve meals, as consumers struggle with the rising cost of essential goods.
Suleiman Abdullah, a restaurant owner, said more expensive bread was adding to operating costs and limiting restaurants' ability to offer affordable meals.
He explained that serving dishes of fava beans, lentils or liver with two loaves of bread no longer satisfies some customers, particularly because the loaves are relatively small. Customers are therefore forced to buy additional bread, increasing the overall cost of their meals.
Issam al-Taj, a taxi driver, said rising prices for basic necessities amid the continuing war had made it increasingly difficult to provide for his family's daily needs.
He estimated that his household spends about 20,000 pounds a day on bread alone.
Taj added that he sometimes has to wait in fuel lines for as long as three days to refuel his taxi, while his earnings remain insufficient to cover his family's essential expenses.
The pressures are particularly severe for families returning to the capital after being displaced by the war.
Hussein Abdullah said he and his family had returned to Khartoum hoping that basic services, including electricity, water, bread and medicine, would be restored. Instead, they found themselves facing living expenses they could not afford.
Fatima Ahmed said she could no longer afford to provide bread for her children's breakfast before they leave for school.
She explained that her family was struggling to meet the children's needs despite its limited resources and called on authorities to support bakeries and ease the impact of rising prices on consumers.
Efforts to Secure Flour Supplies
In an attempt to address the crisis, Khartoum State Governor Ahmed Othman Hamza visited the Rotana flour mills in the Al-Jaili industrial area north of Bahri last Monday to assess production levels and explore ways to secure flour supplies and maintain deliveries to bakeries.
Hamza pointed to overlapping responsibilities among authorities that were disrupting distribution and ordered tighter oversight and measures to address the problems, with the aim of keeping bakeries operating and ensuring bread remains available to residents.
Rising Production Costs
Essam Okasha, head of the Bakers' Union, attributed the latest price increase to higher global wheat prices, the depreciation of the Sudanese pound and rising costs for fuel, gas and yeast.
The dollar has reached approximately 10,000 Sudanese pounds on the parallel market, driving up the cost of importing production supplies and adding to the pressure on bakeries.
Okasha said addressing the crisis would require importing wheat flour and providing financial support to bakeries. However, he acknowledged that sustainable solutions would be difficult to achieve while the war continues and economic conditions deteriorate.
He noted that Sudan's exports are largely limited to gold, with the proceeds, according to him, going toward financing the war.
Okasha expressed hope that bread prices would not rise beyond their current levels and that two loaves would continue to cost 1,000 pounds, given the difficult living conditions facing Sudanese citizens.
Calls for Strategic Wheat Reserves
Economist Haitham Mohammed Fathi said Sudan's bread crisis reflected structural weaknesses in the production system rather than a temporary surge in inflation.
He explained that flour accounts for approximately 70% of production costs, meaning any increase in its price is immediately reflected in the retail price of bread, particularly in the absence of stable subsidy mechanisms.
Fathi added that fuel price increases exceeding 100% during certain periods had driven up transportation and distribution costs, while higher electricity tariffs had further increased operating expenses.
These pressures, he said, have been compounded by the absence of a clear food security policy.
He called for bread to be treated as an essential commodity through the establishment of strategic wheat reserves and a stronger government role in importing and distributing wheat, rather than leaving the entire process to market forces.
Fathi also highlighted disagreements over the foreign exchange rates applied to wheat and flour imports and the gap between those rates and the parallel-market dollar rate used by private businesses to obtain the foreign currency they need.
Rising bread prices are adding to the hardships of Sudanese already exhausted by war, displacement, hunger and the erosion of their purchasing power.
As production costs continue to rise and household incomes decline, securing one of the most basic daily necessities has become a major challenge.
The authorities' ability to ensure adequate flour supplies and control production costs will remain critical to preventing the crisis from worsening.
