FAIRNESS OF DOMESTIC PRICES FOR MOST IMPORTANT CROPS IN EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURAL FOREIGN TRADE: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY

Abstract

Agricultural price policy faces many difficulties due to its overlapping economic, social and technological dimensions. The problem of the study was the fairness of the local prices of the strategic agricultural crops obtained by the farms and the extent to which they keep pace with the changes in world prices, and thus their impact on agricultural incomes and the standard of living of the farmers producing these crops. The crops of study were determined according to their relative importance in the Egyptian agricultural foreign trade. They were rice and cotton crops as the top export crops, and wheat and maize crops were the top grain imports. Following the reference review of the most important studies, researches and scientific theses related to the subject, the theoretical framework of prices and their importance, indices and their uses, equity prices, in addition to the features of the Egyptian agricultural price policies, procedures and means of their implementation, and finally different ways to determine the prices of study crops. Trends for costs, revenues and prices of the studied crops during the period (2000-2016), the study also compared local and international prices, different pricing methods for studied crops were detailed during the period (2000-2016) in real terms for 2010. The estimated prices were compared to the observed local and world prices during the last period (2012-2016), to determine the extent of crop price divergence/convergence between local prices world prices. According to the results, it was suggested that a pricing model be used as a guide for price policy makers in the crops studied.