An Analytical Study of Some Indicators of The Economic Efficiency of Egyptian Agricultural Foreign Trade

Despite the economic reforms that affected the agricultural sector mainly since the mid-eighties and the liberalization of the prices of production requirements and the abolition of the agricultural cycle and leaving freedom to the farms, the deficit in the agricultural trade balance has not decreased in a way that allows an increase in the capabilities of the agricultural sector to bridge the deficit in the trade balance and increase the sector’s contribution to the GDP. Estimates indicate that agricultural exports represent 9.9% of the total value exports, while imports represent 14.4% of total imports, which indicates the extent to which the Egyptian market is affected by global exports more than it affects global markets. The deficit in the agricultural trade balance represented 1.8 billion L.E in 1986, increasing to 70.5 billion L.E in 1996, but the deficit has worsened from 36 billion L.E in 2016 to about 140 billion L.E in 2019. Which requires a search for the efficiency of agricultural foreign trade in playing the role entrusted to it in achieving economic development by increasing its contribution to the gross domestic product and reducing the trade balance deficit. The research then aimed to study and analyze the current situation of foreign trade and its relative importance to any economy with an important significance to identify the The extent of the role that foreign trade plays in the national economy of this economy, and then the research aims to identify the importance of agricultural foreign trade to the Egyptian economy by studying some indicators of measuring the economic efficiency of agricultural trade. Relevant to the study of the Egyptian agricultural trade balance over the period (2015-2019) that the value of agricultural exports increased from 2.9 $ billion in 2015 to 3.2 $ billion in 2019, with an average value of about 2.9 $ billion, and the value of agricultural imports amounted to about 10.2 $ billion in 2020, with an average 8.1 $ billion over the period. Which illustrates the increase in the deficit in the agricultural trade balance from about 3.85 $ billion in 2015 to about 7.3 $ billion in 2020, with an average of about 5.2 $ billion. This deficit constitutes a dangerous phenomenon, as this increase indicates the extent of dependence on the outside world to meet the needs of domestic demand, especially for necessary agricultural commodities such as wheat and its products, sugar, and a group of edible oil crops, in addition to meat products, which leads to the accumulation of external debt. By studying the average propensity to import and export agricultural foreign trade, it was found that the ratio of agricultural exports to GDP was characterized by dwindling and fluctuation, as its maximum value was estimated at 3.9% in 2010, with an average estimated at 3.3% during the study period. Which indicates the dependence of the gross domestic product on major sources other than agriculture. It was also found that the ratio of agricultural imports to GDP fluctuated up and down during the study period, with an average period 2.8%. While the average marginal tendency for agricultural exports was zero during the year 2020, which means that the increase in the value of GDP by the unit amount did not The value of agricultural exports changes, and the average marginal propensity to import was about 0.03 in 2020. This means that with an increase in the value of GDP by a unit, the value of agricultural imports will increase by 0.03 during the same year.
Based on the previous results, the research recommends the necessity of studying the structure of agricultural imports to reconsider what can be reduced from the list of imports and to try to replace it with locally produced goods. Reconsidering the commodity production structure so that agricultural exports can be diversified and not rely on one or more crops as a single export crop, or a particular commodity group.