Food Prices and Food Security in Saudi Arabia: Facts and Trends

Price volatilityPrice volatility has a significant impact on food securityFood security. Saudi Arabia relies on food importsFood imports to meet local demand due to water scarcityScarcity and unfavorable weather conditions restricting local productionLocal production. Therefore, increasing food pricesPrices remain a major concern for Saudi Arabian food companies. This chapter focuses on analyzing food pricePrices changes in terms of facts and trends through the Consumer PricePrices Index (CPI), a measure of inflationInflation, and changes in the average pricesAverage prices of some food commodities. The results show that, the food price indexFood price index in Saudi Arabia is greater than the general consumer pricePrices index during the period of January 2001 to June 2022. It also indicates that food and beverages exhibit the highest average score of CPI compared to the general index during the period of January–May 2023. In addition, the results also show that in 2022, Food and non-alcoholic scored the second ranking of the CPI components. Moreover, the results reveal that there is annual increase in average pricesAverage prices of some food items such as imported honey, coffeeCoffee, red meatRed meat, local glass cheese and FishFishPrices. Thus this pricePrices increase in food pricesPrices will affect households’ ability to access healthy and nutritious food, resulting in an increased prevalence of undernourishmentUndernourishment. Therefore, a food security strategyFood security strategy focusing on increased agricultural efficiency, social protection and trade opennessTrade openness is recommended to ensure a sustainable and affordable food supply.