CAIRO, April 4 (Xinhua) -- "Every day, at the same time after dawn prayers, I come here to buy my daily need of bread. If I do not come at such early time, I will instead have to wait in a long queue," Abu Abdallah, a 63-year-old man said while waiting before one of Cairo bakeries which sell subsidized bread.

Despite strenuous efforts exerted by the Egyptian government to ease the suffering of impoverished people and extend the umbrella of subsidy to cover more poor families, the shortage of some subsidized commodities, especially bread and cooking gas, has become wilder.

In recent years the scene of people standing in queues, either waiting to get a little share of subsidized bread or a refilled butane cylinder to cook food, has became habitual for most Egyptians, especially in poor areas.

According to official figures, Egypt imports about 7 million tons of wheat, or half of its total need, from foreign countries.

Although the Egyptian government has increased wheat imports to cover the needs of its people, the effort has been offset by the bigger increase in consumption.

Some experts attribute the increase of subsidized bread consumption to the deterioration of living conditions of many Egyptian families and the expansion of low income brackets due to financial challenges and unemployment, both of which forced many families to depend more on subsidized bread.

"Bread is the most important. As long as it is available, even small quantity of other food will be enough," Abu Abdallah said.

Abdel Hamid El-Gazali, an Egyptian socioeconomic expert and professor of economics in Cairo University, attributes a major portion of subsidy problem to ill-practices like reselling subsidized wheat in black markets and using subsidized bread as fodder.

The Egyptian government, however, has adopted several measures to curb such ill-practices, including strict observation system on bakeries and imposing huge fines on violations instead of penal punishments.

The government has also decided to separate distribution from production and developed a new ration card system to deliver subsidized bread to needy families.

However, the violations were inevitable for a country with some 23,500 bakeries that are involved in the process.

In addition to bread, the government's subsidy system also covers basic commodities like sugar, tea, rice and cooking oil, as well as butter, beans, lentils and macaroni.

But people complain that the subsidized commodities provided through the ration card system are insufficient and shoddy.

"It is not enough but it helps. I wish the government could increase the quantities and issue more ration cards as food commodities became unaffordable," said Um Ayman, 31, standing in a subsidized commodity distribution center.

However, the government denies the claims, saying that it has doubled the number of families which benefit from the ration card system in the past five years.

In 2004, the number of people who fell under the umbrella of the system was estimated at 39.8 million. Now, 63 million of the 79 million total population benefit from the system, according to figures of the Ministry of Social Solidarity.

The quantity of subsidized sugar has increased to 750,000 tons against only 480,000 in 2004, the cooking oil to 385,000 tons against 192,000, extra quantities of rice to 960,000 tons against 224,000.

Gazali said that one problem is that the ration card system is unfair. Some people carry full-subsidy cards, even though they do not need them to survive, while others, who deserve full subsidy, unfortunately carry partial-subsidy ones.

He attributed this to the governmental negligence of regular update of subscribers' database and a lack of investigation into the social conditions of the families, which makes some people profit from the subsidy.

Gazali's study says 45 percent of the ration cards include the names of dead people, while 55 percent of the families can not add the names of the new births in their ration cards.

The Egyptian government says it is currently building a new database to guarantee delivering subsidy to the people in actual need of it.

"I do not think the government will keep it (subsidy system) in the current formula. Maybe they will come out with a plan to reach out more for the neediest," Ahmed, a 26-year-old journalist, said.