Lead Up To Riots
The riots' origin lay in president Anwar Sadat's Infitah (openness) policy, which had, since he took power at the beginning of the decade, sought to liberalize the economy. In 1976, he sought loans from the World Bank in an effort to relieve the country's debt burden. The bank criticized the state's policy of subsidizing basic foodstuffs, and Sadat announced in January 1977 that it was ending subsidies on flour, rice, and cooking oil and that it would cancel state employee bonuses and pay increases. The new policies resulted in a rise in the price of food by up to 50%.
Read more about this topic: 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots
Famous quotes containing the word lead:
“The greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so constructed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)