Egypt, one of the key importers of fresh apples in the world, continues to reduce trade in these fruits, according to EastFruit. Under conditions of rapid devaluation of the national currency, growth in food prices and other economic problems, apple imports have fallen to 5-year low in Egypt.
In the first seven months of the current MY 2022/23 (July-January), Egypt imported just 110,000 tonnes of apples, almost half of the import volumes in the same period of the previous season. Just to remind, apple imports have reached record high 300,000 tonnes in the previous MY 2021/22, with the main part of trading volumes registered in July-January. Thus, Egypt will most likely import record low volumes of apples over the whole current MY, as imports in February-June will unlikely compensate a downturn.
Apple imports have fallen in Egypt due to a variety of reasons. At the beginning, the Egyptian economy was hit hard by COVID-19 pandemic, as lockdown measures had turned out to be a catastrophe for the country with extremely high dependence on tourism.
Then, the Coronacrisis was followed by rising energy costs across the globe, which resulted in an increase in local production costs in Egypt. This, in turn, led to a decline in exporters’ profits and gradually dwindling availability of foreign currency in the country.
The last hit was the russian war against Ukraine, followed by rapidly rising food prices and rapid devaluation of the national currency in Egypt. As a result, the food inflation has exceeded 60% in Egypt by February 2023, while the USD to EGP exchange rate has doubled!
Unlike other key global importers, the Egyptian apple market is characterized by rather high concentration. Top-3 partner countries (Poland, Greece, Italy) usually account for up to 97% of total apple imports in Egypt! Meanwhile, other exporting countries’ chances to strengthen their position in the Egyptian market are rather limited due to either relatively small volumes of probable exports, or high import duties. For example, apples imported to Egypt from Ukraine are subject to 40% import duty, while Poland, along with other EU countries, enjoys a zero rate of import duty.
In 2021, Egypt was the fifth largest importer of fresh apples globally, but, in view of economic problems, its position in the global ranking started going down. Nevertheless, Egypt’s role for exporting countries is still important. In 2022, Egypt accounted for about 13% of Poland’s total apple exports and imported 8% of Italian apple export volumes. As regards Greece, in 2022, almost two thirds of total exports of Greek apples had Egypt as their destination.
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