Madar (Algiers) - Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune ordered the Prime Minister, during a Council of Ministers meeting he chaired on Sunday, October 18, 2026, to open an immediate inquiry into the "negative role" of some meat importers in monopolising the product and raising its price, according to a presidency statement carried by Algerian media.
According to the statement, the inquiry will also cover the sale of imported meat by some butchers at the price of local meat, and the price gaps recorded between wilayas and even between neighbourhoods of the same city.
Tebboune ordered a draft text strictly regulating intermediaries between producers and consumers, and tasked the Ministry of Internal Trade with preparing a system of price caps and profit margins for vegetables, pulses, pasta and meat, taking into account production and marketing chains.
He also instructed the Interior Minister, in coordination with the walis, to set up a mechanism to buy and store surplus local produce and release it onto the market at the first signs of price changes. The Council further decided on decentralised daily price monitoring by trade directors under the walis' authority, a doubling of price-control teams and a digital database to serve as an alert system for abnormal price rises.
The Council also reviewed progress on the mining railway linking Bled El Hadba to the port of Annaba and the port's mining quay. Tebboune ordered the immediate launch of the Laghouat-El Menia-In Salah-Tamanrasset railway, and the Council examined contracts to connect new desalination plants in Chlef, Mostaganem and Tlemcen to distribution networks, the statement said.
