ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF EGYPTIAN FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL TRADE WITH EUROPEAN UNION MARKETS

Abstract

Foreign trade plays a great role to achieve economic development for almost all countries. However, Egypt being one of the developing countries is still suffering from the widening gap between increasing food imports and exports. This problem has subsequent effects on Egyptian agricultural trade balance and hence Egyptian balance of payments. The study showed that the relative importance of the total agricultural exports to, as compared to the total national exports, reached its highest level of 16.4 % in 2017, while its lowest level was about 6.2% in 2007. For the relative importance of the total agricultural imports to, as compared to the total national imports, it reached its highest level of 22.5% in 2005, while its lowest level was about 5.5% in 2016. It appears that the average agricultural exports covered about 5.1% of the total national imports during the period 2005-2011, while it was about 4.6% during the period 2012-2018. The decrease of the coverage of national imports by the agricultural exports in second period compared with first period was due to the increase of the total national imports by about 77.5% (bases 2005-2011). The ratio of agricultural exports coverage established around 4.6% of the total national imports during the period 2005-2018. That was due to the fact that Egyptian governments in the last years reduced the national imports specially the food commodities, and slightly increase the national exports particularly the agricultural exports. The conduct study showed that the average total value of agricultural imports EU markets amounted to about US$ 743.35 million during the period 2005-2018, while the average total Egyptian agricultural exports with EU countries amounted to about US$ 663.9 million during the period 2005- 2018. The deficit of Egyptian agricultural balance of trade with EU markets reached about US$ 87.34 million or 1.54 % of the total deficit of Egyptian balance of trade in 2005-2011, and increased to US$ 132.85 million or about 1.01 % of the total deficit of Egyptian balance of trade in 2012-2018. It was appear that the impact of EU liberalization on Egypt will have negative effect on agricultural balance of trade with about US$ 79.44 million during the all study period 2005-2018.