Egypt’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Ahmed Samir, recently announced that the country’s trade deficit recorded a significant decline. The deficit in 2023 reached $36.9 billion compared to $48.06 billion in 2022. Merchandise exports exceeded 2022 levels, recording $35.63 billion in 2023. As for merchandise imports, they decreased by 14 percent year-on-year to $72.54 billion in 2023.
Egypt’s exports
Egypt’s exports to non-Arab African countries achieved a significant increase of 7 percent worth $2.24 billion. As for exports to the Arab League countries, they amounted to $13.4 billion. Meanwhile, exports to the European Union recorded $9.5 billion, and to the United States (U.S.), $1.96 billion. In his announcement, Samir also revealed that Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Italy, and the U.S. were the countries that received the most exports from Egypt.
Türkiye ranked first among Egypt’s export markets with a value of $2.94 billion. Following closely came Saudi Arabia with a value of $2.7 billion and the UAE with about $2.2 billion.
Read: Saudi Arabia’s PIF attracted over $25 billion worth of investments in three years
Egypt’s economic growth
In related news, Egypt’s Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Hala al-Said, recently stated that the government spending rationalization plan will not affect the economic growth target for the current fiscal year of 3 percent. The cabinet also recently approved a draft decision to rationalize investment spending by 15 percent according to controls. This includes reducing public treasury funding in the investment plan for the current fiscal year.
Earlier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reduced its growth expectations for Egypt’s economy in the current fiscal year 2023-2024 by 0.6 percent compared to previous expectations of 3 percent. In addition, the IMF expected Egypt’s economic growth to accelerate to 4.7 percent in the fiscal year 2024-2025. This represents a reduction in expectations by 0.3 percentage points compared to the IMF’s earlier estimates issued in October.
Currently, Egypt suffers from a shortage of foreign exchange resources. Its revenues from the Suez Canal, one of the country’s largest sources of foreign exchange, have been affected. That is due to the disturbances taking place in the Red Sea, which increases pressure on Egypt’s economy which is highly dependent on imports.
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