CAIRO: Abdel Nabi Salim’s main job in life is queuing for bread.

The greying 65-year-old retired administrator stands under Egypt’s glaring noon sun, waiting in a queue that snakes out to the street to buy 20 loaves of steaming subsidised pocket bread from a barred window for $0.18.

Egypt has for decades provided cheap bread for the poor as an expensive but essential component of its economic policy because it enables millions to survive on low salaries and wards off political discontent.

But bread lines have lengthened in recent months as costs of other non-subsidised Egyptian staples soared, forcing more reliance on a subsidy regime that depends heavily on costly imported wheat and is also strained by a thriving black market.

The current crunch means that once Salim buys his first batch of bread, he will return to the back of the line to wait, again, for the additional 10 loaves he needs to keep his extended family from going hungry.

“This is a rotten system,” he said, a half hour into a daily wait for bread that can last several hours. “I come here every day. I have no work, so this is my job. Waiting for bread.”

What is happening in Egypt illustrates some of the risks and trade-offs of subsidies, just as more countries worldwide are looking at such measures to try to ease the burden of spiralling global food prices on the poor.

Excruciating lines have prompted media headlines of a bread ‘crisis’ in the most populous Arab country, where cuts in bread subsidies led to riots in 1977 that killed scores and forced the government to back down.

Egypt has allocated over $2.5 billion for bread subsidies for this fiscal year, but said that may rise due to soaring wheat costs. Yet the pressure over bread remains.

Observers say sustained problems in the subsidy system could lead to a repeat of the 1977 crisis, if not quickly contained.

“It may be something far more reaching and much more violent, I’m afraid, because people are increasingly feeling that their faces are to the wall,” said Gouda Abdel Khalek, a Cairo University economist.

DEATH IN THE LINES: Already, at least 11 people have died in bread lines since early February, including a heart attack victim and a woman hit by a car while standing in a queue that stretched into the street, security sources said.