Egypt's non-oil imports decline by 24% in first 4 months of 2020

Egyptian tourists ride a camel along a bazaar street in the Nubian village of Gharb Suhail, on the west bank of the Nile river off Egypt’s southern city of Aswan some 920 kilometres south of the capital. /Getty Images.

Egypt's non-oil imports have sharply declined by 24 percent during the first four months of 2020 in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak, Minister of Trade and Industry Nevine Gamea said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The non-oil imports hit more than 18 billion U.S. dollars in the four months compared to 24 billion dollars in the same period in 2019,”the statement said.

Gamea attributed the decline of import rates to the international anti-coronavirus precautionary measures that carried impacts on global trade.

She added the government initiatives to revive the manufacturing sector amid the COVID-19 have contributed to increasing the production rates in many factories.

Meanwhile, Egyptian exports in the first four months of 2020 have seen a slight decline by only 2 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.

The statement explained that the country has tended recently to direct a large part of the state-run factories' production to meet the needs of the local market as a substitute for the imported commodities.

It highlighted the drop in the imports and exports' indications have reduced the deficit of the trade balance of Egypt by 35 percent year on year.

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency