Welcome to another exciting post in the Egyptian Chronicles' special Ramadan coverage! For those who are still with us, today we will be continuing a tour of the Ramadan market in El-Sadd El-Barani street through a series of captivating photos and important economic facts.
In case you do not know, Ramadan is our version of Christmas when it comes to festivities and the fanoos or the lantern is our Christmas tree. In case you do not know Egypt is currently living in one of its worst economic crises ever.
Believe me, I am just getting started.
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| A vendor with a pack of change at the Ramadan market |
You should read the first part of the tour as well as its video and the attempt to find the reason behind holding the Ramadan market at El-Sadd El-Barani street that ended up finding instead the history behind the name itself, the name of “El-Sadd El-Barani”.
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| Inside Ramadan lanterns stand at the market |
According to the statements of the officials at the Toys division at the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, the production of lanterns in Egypt went down from 5 million lanterns in 2022 to 2 million lanterns in 2023.
It went down by 3 million lanterns.
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| Traditional lanterns of all sizes are sold here |
This shows how the economic crisis impacted the lantern factories thanks to the inflation and last year's crises whether the global supply crisis or the US dollar in banks crisis and its impacts on imports above them the industry's inputs.
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| Ramadan traditional tin and glass lanterns along the more modern wooden lanterns |
According to the officials of the chamber, the prices of lanterns increased by 50% because the production costs went up by 100%.
In early March, the Central Bank of Egypt stated the annual core inflation rate rose to 40.3% in February 2023, compared to 31.2% in January 2023. It is the highest annual core inflation rate in five and a half years.
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| Ramadan traditional tin and glass lanterns along the more modern wooden lanterns |
The Ramadan lanterns' final price increased by 50% only instead of 100% because there was still stock from last year already.
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| Lanterns vendor and buyers at Ramadan market in Cairo |
You can summarize the economic situation in Cairo now with that photo.
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| "The photo is for LE 5" |
The label on the huge Ramadan lantern reads “The photo is for LE 5” and it targets the customers who do not buy lanterns but rather take photos and selfies with the lanterns.
Maybe it was not free to snap selfies or photos with the lanterns in that stand but other stands let the customers snap photos as they want.
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| A free photo with lanterns |
The good news is that there is high demand for Egyptian traditional lanterns abroad which means more exports.
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| Traditional lanterns from tin and wood are sold here |
Egypt exports around 200 thousand lanterns to UAE, Jordan, Libyan and Italy as well as other European countries.
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| The land of one thousand and one lanterns for real |
I believe that small industries can bring millions of extremely needed foreign currency to the country along the whole Ramadan vibes products if there is official help and our embassies do their job opening markets abroad for those products.
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| Everything Ramadan from lanterns, bags, glasses, cups and cloth are sold here |
This year I noticed that there was more expansion in using Ramadan characters or pop culture characters like Bogy and Tamtam, Bakar, Basant and Diasty as well as MBC Fananees characters as dolls and toys.
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| Ramadan traditional lanterns and plastic dolls are sold here |
Aside from the plushies, there are those automated musical dolls too.
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| Boogy, Tamam, Bassant, Bakar and Fanaees are sold as dolls |
Those dolls were not cheap though.
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| Tamtam does not like as it seems |
This Tamtam “I do not like you” pose doll is sold for LE 350, which is a bit expensive for the customers here.
It broke the hearts of kids and adults when they asked as I saw first hand.
Other similar Ramadan toys and accessories are not cheap too.
Again according to the Toys division at the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, the prices of Ramadan toys increased by 60-70%.
This is because we import that sound unit from abroad aka China.
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| Non-Ramadan toys and dolls are also sold at the market |
Also, there was a huge collection of Ramadan keychains which I like and bought from honestly.
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| The Ramadan keychains |
They are catchy and cheap. They are made of that rubbery plastic material. I bought the violet one with a cute Ramadan lantern to use with my camera.
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I was once told that there are graphic designers who are specialized in designing Ramadan accessories and honestly kudos to them.
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| Old traditional lanterns, modern lanterns, Ramadan bags and Ramadan keychains in one shot |
They are contributing to the history and current pop culture of this country, this nation without realizing it when you think about it.
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| The vendors of the Ramadan market |
They are also contributing to the economy whether the official economy or the grey economy in a very hard time.
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| Ramadan Karim as always from Cairo |
Oh and Ramadan Karim
Great pictures, insightful snd humorous descriptions.
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