The Arabic news is reported by the BBC.
In Algeria, shoppers say cooking oil and milk are hard to find, so you need to butter up shopkeepers to get any.
The war in Ukraine is making life hard for consumers because of the measures taken to deal with the coronaviruses.
"It feels like buying drugs, with a mixture of cynicism and revulsion," says Samiha Sammer, 31, with a mixture of cynicism and revulsion.
She used to love making cakes for family and friends, but now can't find all the ingredients she needs.
To buy cooking oil from a grocery store, you need to know the shop owner, according to Ms Sammer.
The precious supply is hidden at the back of the shop, and the exchange takes place discreetly.
She noticed last year that Covid measures began to bite.
With the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starting this weekend, Algerians have been stepping up their efforts to get hold of cooking oil, as it is a vital ingredient in many of the special dishes eaten during the month.
Ms Sammer sometimes travels from her home in Blida to the small town of Kolea, where fruit and vegetables are cheaper.
The price of potatoes is 30% more expensive than a few months ago, and people queue before sunrise to get some for their families.
The administration clerk says that he has stopped doing that as it involves pushing around crowds and sometimes fighting to get your share of the milk.
It comes at a cost.
She pays more for privately imported powdered milk than she does for the state-subsidised kind.
For years, Algeria has relied on imports from France, other EU countries and the United Arab Emirates to make its milk, usually in the form of a powder that is liquified in local factories before reaching consumers.
Cooking oil is something that Algerians don't like very much.
The oil is subsidized by the state, but even before the current crisis, it was already expensive.
The pressure has been mounting on the authorities to act because of the high average monthly salaries of $240 for private sector workers and $410 for public sector workers in Algeria.
A parliamentary select committee found in a damning report that there has been an increase in food and corruption as a result of the country's economic hardship.
Hisham said that cooking-oil traders inflated the amount of subsidized goods they sold in order to get more money back from the government.
Most of the 150,000 violations that were reported to the authorities ended up in court and thousands of trading permits were taken away.
The parliamentary commission said that there was a problem with the sale of subsidized goods across Algeria's southern border to other countries.
According to sources, as many as 12 truckloads of cooking oil were smuggled from Algeria into Africa every day.
The culprits sell the state-funded cooking oil in hard currency and make a profit of up to $17,800 per load.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune banned the export of food items that contain ingredients that were originally imported, such as cooking oil, sugar, pasta, semolina and other wheat products.
The president wants the acts to be punished as economic sabotage, according to reports.
To find the deeper causes of Algeria's crunch, you have to look back further.
The reliance on the sale of gas and crude oil as an engine for growth and a source of government revenue has created many problems.
The mismanagement of the sector with many deals happening on the parallel market is costing the treasury huge amounts of money.
The economic problems could lead to more political unrest.
The weak links between rulers and ruled could break if the rising prices reach a point where the population is not happy.
The former president was forced to step down in the face of widespread popular protests.
His successor, who was once a close ally, now condemns the Mafia which stole the country's money.
Despite the change of president, many young people continued to take part in regular street demonstrations until the Pandemic struck in March 2020.
Three-quarters of the population is under the age of 37, and unemployment has risen to 11%, with many of the jobless being university graduates.
From this month, the government will give a monthly allowance of about $90 to people who have been looking for work.
The authorities can afford to pay out this money in the short term because of the rise in gas prices.
The potential boost from oil revenue over the past 20 years was lost because Algeria couldn't afford to squander the latest windfall from gas revenues.
Ms Sammer is stuck looking for the best deals and hoping that a friendly shopkeeper will give her access to a squirrelled-away stash of cooking oil.
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