Egyptian Agricultural Exports Competitiveness

The study dealt with the competitiveness of Egypt’s agricultural exports for the major commodity groups: Meat and meat preparations, Dairy products and bird eggs, Cereals and cereals preparations, Vegetables and Fruits, Sugar, sugar preparations and honey, Feeding stuff of animals, Beverages, Tobacco, Oils and fats, and Textile fiber and their waste. The study has not restricted the estimated measure of the competitiveness to only the classical Revealed Comparative Advantage Index (RCA), it applied the other elaborated indices, in order to avoid unfavorable conclusions due to policy distortions and/or the export (supply) pattern and the Import (demand) pattern of the specified commodities. The relative export advantage index, [Ln(RXA)], results coincided with the RCA results in all food groups, which means that the “policy induced distortions” had the same impact on all studied food groups. The RTA (Relative Trade Advantage) and RC (Revealed Competitiveness) indices consist with the real world economic phenomenon of two ways trade, i.e. the price and quantity differences of exports and imports. If exports share in the world market either surpassed much the imports, due to the price (quality), quantity (magnitude), or if both were too small (the case of oils and fats) then the results of RTA and RC would be quite different but more reliable than RCA. The study provided evidences for such conclusion. It seems that RC gives the most reliable results, as it considers the resultant from both values of exports and the percent of imports covered by the exports. Thereof, RC introduced vegetables and fruits to the front of competitiveness of Egypt's exports, as such group showed the highest value of exports and the second order of the (Exports/Imports) %. It was followed by textiles and fiber crops at the second order of the exports value but the first order with respect to (Exports/Imports) %. Although the exports value of beverages group came at the fourth order after cereals and preparations, dairy products and Eggs and sugar products, it surpassed much all of them as (Exports/Imports) %, which was around 168%, while it was 20%, 18% and 5% for the other three groups. Thereof, both RTA and RC ranked sugar products as number 4 with respect to the comparative advantage. The analysis showing that the (Exports/Imports)% is the dominant criteria in ranking the agro-food groups according to the competitiveness and that RC is the most sensitive index, particularly when we go gradually down to the agro-food groups with smaller and smaller export values. Therefore, it looks reasonable, to see dairy products (Exports/Imports) of about 18% comes number 5 followed by cereals of (Exports/Imports)% around 5%, where RTA, as it gives more importance to the volume of exports, ranked them in an opposite order. The best -fitted ARIMA model applied for Egyptian Fruits and Vegetables Exports was (0, 1, 1). Forecasting results implies that the comparative export advantage of Egyptian Fruits and Vegetables to the world market seems to decrease over the forthcoming decade. The best-fitted ARIMA model applied for Egyptian Textile and Fiber Exports was (0, 0, 1). Forecasting results implies that the comparative export advantage of Egyptian textiles and fiber crops to the world market seems to decrease over the forthcoming decade. The best-fitted ARIMA model applied for Egyptian Sugars and Honey exports was (1, 1, 2). Forecasting results implies that the comparative export advantage of Egypt in Sugar and Honey (Sugar processed products) to the world market seems to increase slightly over the forthcoming decade, with moderate fluctuations