A standard analysis of Egyptian foreign trade structure for wheat

• Main Authors: Yehia Mohamed Metwally Khalil, Salah Said Abd El-Ghani, Tamer Gamal Ibrahim Mansour
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2020-02-01
• Series: Bulletin of the National Research Centre
• Subjects: Standard analysis; Foreign trade; Wheat
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s42269-020-0273-9

Abstract Background Wheat is one of the most important food and strategic crops because it is the main food for most Egyptian people; the research aimed to analyze the structure of the Egyptian foreign trade for wheat by determining the most important economic factors affecting the production, consumption, and imports of wheat. By building a standard model for analyzing the foreign wheat trade market in order to narrow the gap between production and consumption so as not to negatively affect the development rates in Egypt and to alleviate the deficit of the Egyptian trade balance, the research was based on descriptive and quantitative analysis using various measures such as relative importance and averages, simple regression analysis, and Simultaneous Equation System. Results There is a positive correlation between the quantity of wheat consumed as a dependent variable and the quantity of imports, local production, real national income, and the population as independent variables. For example, the increase in wheat imports by 1 million tons led to an increase in the quantity consumed by 0.243 million tons; the import equation estimates that the decrease in domestic consumption of wheat by 1 million tons, the import price of wheat by one dollar, and the quantity of wheat stock by 1 million tons each lead to an increase in the quantity of imports of wheat at a rate of 0.97, 0.002, and 0.156 million tons, respectively, while the increase in real national income by 1 billion pounds increases the quantity of imports by about 0.005 million tons. Conclusions The study concluded that while the factors affecting Egyptian imports of wheat remain the same, the probability of an increase in the Egyptian import bill increases year after year with a consequent increase in the deficit of the Egyptian trade balance, as well as the agricultural trade balance.