THE COMPETITIVE SITUATION OF THE EGYPTIAN FRESH PEACH EXPORTS IN THE FOREIGN MARKETS

Abstract

The research problem is concentrated in that despite the comparative advantage for production of the fresh peach crop, Egypt occupies position No. 19 among the biggest exporters of the crop in the world with a relative importance amounted to about 0.34% of the total world exports of fresh peaches in 2014. This is in addition to a decline in the relative importance of the amount of exports from peach to represent about 1.6% of the total fresh fruit exports in 2013. The research aims to study the current situation of production and Exports of the Egyptian fresh peach crop and the study of competitiveness indicators inside the most important export markets. These results of the research showed that the total area of the peach amounted to about 81 000 feddans as an average for the period (2001-2014), while the productive area of about 74 000 feddans , also show that there is significant decrease in fruitful peach area as much as about a thousand feddans annually during the study period. As it turns out that productivity increased from about 2.92 tons per feddan in 2001 to about 4.75 tons in 2014, as the average amount of production as much as about 334 000 tonnes as an average for the period of the study. Results showed the increasing value of the production of peaches from about 320 million pounds in 2001 to about 596 million pounds in 2014, growing at a rate of about 86%.The results also showed the increasing amount of Egyptian exports of fresh peach crop from about 115.5 tons in 2001 to around 11264 tonnes in 2014, with an average of about 5,600 tons during the period (2001-2014). It is also showed that there is a statistically significant annual increase amounted to about 1099 tons. As shown by the results of the geographical distribution of the most important export markets for the Egyptian Peach crop, Iraq comes at the forefront of the importing countries, representing about 42.3% of the total volume of Egyptian exports as an average for the period (2008 to 2014), followed by the United Kingdom, Italy and Saudi Arabia with relative importance reached about 17.7%, 8.9%, 8.1% during that period, respectively. It turns out that the best export periods of peaches in terms of quantity are the months of April and May as the amount of exports reached about 8870 tons representing about 95% of the average Egyptian exports during the period (2011 -2013), which amounted to about 9333 tons. As indicated the results of the study of export performance are indications that Egypt has a comparative advantage phenomenon in the export of fresh peach, where more than comparative advantage coefficient phenomenon for the right one in most of the years of study where estimated at 1.08 on average for the period (2010-2014), as transactions estimated instability of both quantity production and export quantity and export price, 7.6, 32.7, 22.7, respectively, which indicates that despite the instability of the amount of production of peaches in the recent period, but there is a demand on exports of them in the world market,