Egypt has been through a lot in the past five years, including a dictator-toppling revolution and a military-backed coup. However, whatever the chaos faced by the country during these years, and whoever the nominal leader, Egypt’s agricultural sector has continued to develop and exporters have continued to export their produce.
According to Hisham Elmeleigy, assistant chairman of Egypt’s Agriculture Export Council and chairman of grower-exporter Blue Nile, this owes much to the importance of the sector for the country and the support of successive governments.
How important is it to have the support of the government in order to continue the growth of Egypt’s agricultural sector?
Hisham Elmeleigy: We have a very strong government backing that supports the industry. They are really driving us in all avenues, trying to facilitate the growth of the sector. And all the governments have backed us, not just this one, but this one particularly so.
In fact, our president has been meeting exporters and growers on a personal level, spending more time with them than the minister, to try and solve their problems and achieve greater equality for us.
What sort of developments are you seeing among Egyptian producers and exporters?
HE: There are many companies now in Egypt who have developed to a level where they are achieving world-class standards, in terms of infrastructure facilities, growing techniques and ethical trading with the workers. So we’re now fitting in and reaching levels above many of our competing countries in the sector. We also achieved last year to become the number one exporter of oranges in the world. So things are progressing quite well.
Is Europe still the most important market for Egypt? Are there other markets that exporters are increasingly targeting for growth?
HE: Europe is the base for our products, but we have a very high market share in Russia, and we’re trying to get into Asia as well. But Europe as a whole, including eastern Europe, is important for us. As are the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, but these markets are not quite at the same level of standards that we achieve for Europe.
Are there any obvious areas for improvement that you can see?
HE: Of course, we still have issues. We need to improve our transportation to Europe – fast transportation, by sea and not by air. We need to have a much bigger base of trade personnel in the fields and in packing, so there are many things that we need to improve on.
