Egypt’s trade deficit fell in 2 years to save foreign currency

CAIRO – 11 August 2017: In attempt to rationalize spending of international foreign reserves, the Egyptian government has taken measures to lessen its imports bill.

Towards that goal, the Ministry of Industry and Foreign Trade started working on decreasing the deficit in the trade balance. Among the steps attained was eliminating low-quality imports, achieving the target from the exports’ development plan, preserving the hard currency and depending on the local products.

The below graph has shown the improvement in the trade balance deficit since the beginning of FY2015/16 until the first quarter of 2017.

Higher exports recorded after the flotation allowed Egypt to decrease trade deficit 46 percent over the first half of 2017.

In that period, the trade deficit recorded $11.13 billion in the first half of 2017, down from $24 billion in the year-ago period, according to the ministry’s foreign trade statistics.

The ministry reasoned the deficit drop to higher exports by eight percent to reach $11.13 billion in the first six months of 2017 compared to $10.29 billion in the same period of the previous year.

On the other hand, imports leveled down 30 percent to $24 billion in H1 of 2017, compared to $34 billion in H1 of 2016.



Deficit in trade balance over the past two years- Egypt Today graph