Bahrain Mirror: The Bahrain Financial and Administrative National Audit Office said in its report for 2017 and 2018 that the Ministry of Industry and Trade does not conduct any periodic inspections of bakeries.

He explained that the ministry only conducts random inspection visits, which included between 2014 and March 2018 about 25% of bakeries, which means that three-quarters of the bakeries have been without control and supervision for more than four years.

The NAO said in its report that this opens the door for the bakeries to manipulate the amounts of subsidized flour and not comply with the rules of the use of flour and the prices and weights of its products.

In a related context, the report revealed that the Ministry allocated quotas of subsidized flour to 80 bakeries that have commercial records that have been expired for more than 3 years, as those bakeries are still registered as active bakeries in the databases of the ministry, although their activity has stopped.

The NAO said that this led to the distribution of quantities of subsidized flour to those bakeries unlawfully, which leads to an increase in the risk of trading with subsidized flour illegally.

Arabic Version