Egypt’s foreign trade declines 25% during Q1 due to coronavirus

Egypt’s foreign trade slumps 25 percent reaching $23.848 billion during the first quarter of 2020, down from $28.028 billion in the comparable period of 2019 amid coronavirus pandemic out break according to the state’s statistics agency CAPMAS.

In its monthly bulletin on foreign trade data, CAPMAS said trade deficit declined 32.1 percent during the first three month reaching $8.452 billion compared to $12.454 billion a year earlier.

In addition the Egyptian imports was also affected by the outbreak of coronavirus, as  it declined  20.2 percent during  January-March 2020 to record about $16.15 billion against 20.241 billion dollars during the same period in 2019.

The bulletin attributed this to the decline in imports of petroleum products by 59.2 percent during the first 3 months of 2020 to record $ 754 million against $ 1.847 billion during the same period in 2019, as well as non-oil imports by 22 percent to reach about $ 13.855 billion against $ 17.769 billion.

However, the egyptian exports witnessed a slight decrease of 1.1 percent  registering $7.698 billion dol, compared to $7.787 billion dollars during the same period last year.

UAE, Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and US account for 31.6 percent of the total Egyptian exports with a value of $2.435 billion in comparison to $2.386 billion with a growth of 2.3 percent