importance of agriculture and food trade for build- ing resilience to food price shocks. In 2014 Egypt prepared several laws related to the support of farmer associations, contract farming, crop insur- ance schemes, and health insurance for farmers.8 Te government has also supported the cultivation of new land, with the aim of producing more food and creating jobs. To encourage new production efforts, both Egypt and Jordan introduced higher government procurement prices for wheat during 2014.9 Te Jordanian government also increased its strategic wheat reserves more than threefold to a 10-month reserve. To protect the price of local wheat, Morocco continues to control the customs duties of wheat and subsidizes local wheat importers. Follow- ing the 40 percent reduction in global wheat prices in 2013, the government raised wheat tariffs from 17 to 45 percent in 2014. By 2015 Saudi Arabia plans to increase its strategic grain reserve capacity by close to 75 percent in order to cover a larger share of its growing annual consumption of wheat.10 While these policies and public investments are likely to help build resilience, the fiscal sustainability and effi- ciency of these measures remain uncertain. At the regional level, progress has been made
in improving access to development-related infor- mation with the launching of the first blog on food and nutrition security for the region (
www.arabspa-
tial.org) at the Commitee on World Food Security meeting on October 17, 2014.
2015 AND BEYOND
Looking ahead in 2015, enhancing stability and good governance will likely become even more important for improving food security. Surely, many of the policy actions that need to be urgently tackled remain the same as before the Arab awakening, such as fostering economic transformation and growth that creates jobs, improving the business climate, shiſting from subsidies to targeted income transfers, developing innovative solutions for agriculture and water constraints, improving trade and market inte- gration, and leveraging health, nutrition, and educa- tion for food security.11 Posing a challenge to these pro-poor reforms, however, are persistent problems of governance within the MENA region.
80 REGIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
For the most part, policy reforms with redistribu-
tive consequences, such as those related to food and fuel subsidies, are contentious because they result in winners and losers, be they real or perceived. Terefore, to gain public support for such reforms, citizens need to have sufficient trust that their gov- ernment can effectively implement reforms and that the promised benefits from reform will materialize. Furthermore, analyses of successful subsidy reform programs suggest that the reforms involve extensive sequencing and potentially multiple government agencies.12 To ensure that vulnerable households are not adversely affected, more targeted instruments for beneficiaries (such as smart cards) or the con- current implementation of social protection policies (such as cash transfers) may need to be introduced. For example, the gradual approach to fuel subsidy elimination that Morocco took in 2014 involved mitigation policies that expanded the coverage and amount of its social safety net and retained subsidies on wheat, sugar, and cooking gas. Egypt, weary from three years of social turmoil, also coupled its fuel subsidy cuts with an expanded and larger safety net, which included increasing the number of subsidized commodities under the food ration program. In jux- taposition, when the Yemeni government reneged on its promise to redirect the savings from fuel subsidy cuts, public outrage ensued and created grievances on which the Houthis mobilized, aggravating civil conflict and lowering fuel prices to pre-reform levels. One could conclude that successful policy
reforms seem to require at least three factors: (1) confidence in government, (2) adequate state capacity for implementation, and (3) effective mech- anisms of accountability. Taking these three ele- ments into account reveals the broad diversity of governance quality within the MENA region. For those countries that underwent regime change in the wake of the Arab awakening, trust in govern- ment is a particular challenge because current ruling parties and leaders, relatively new and unknown to citizens, do not have a proven track record. But the Tunisian case highlights that low levels of confidence in government can co-exist with relatively high lev- els of state capacity. According to the World Bank’s Governance Indicators, in 2013 Tunisia remained the region’s highest-ranked country for the quality
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