Egypt's Economic Enablers to Confront the Crisis of Wheat under the Contemporary Global Challenges "الممكنات الاقتصادية لمواجهة أزمة القمح في مصر في ظل التحديات العالمية المعاصرة"

Abstract

The problem of the study is summarized in the sharp gap between the local production and consumption of wheat in Egypt, which negatively affected the rates of self-sufficiency and the state of wheat food security. Consequently Therefore, the study generally aimed at identifying the economic enablers to confront the crisis of wheat in Egypt, using both descriptive and quantitative statistical analysis methods, and depending on published and unpublished time-series data from its various sources.The study found that there is a decrease in food security coefficient of wheat in Egypt during the study period (2001-2020), which was estimated at 0.35. This coefficient means that the strategic stock of wheat in Egypt is only sufficient to the local consumption of 4.2 months. The results also showed that (dependency ratio on wheat imports, population) are the most important variables affecting the ratio of self-sufficiency of wheat in Egypt, which explained together about 84% of the total changes occurred in self-sufficiency during the study period. Estimating the supply response model for wheat in Egypt, it was found that the cultivated area of wheat in the current year is greatly affected by the net revenue of wheat acre in the previous year, which explains about 85% of the total changes in the cultivated area of wheat.Concerning the farm prices for wheat in Egypt, the findings indicated that the actual price of wheat according to production costs during the study period was lower than the estimated price, and this means that farm prices are not remunerative for farmers to grow and produce wheat. It was also found that the actual prices according to the parity prices (based on the general index of wholesale prices and the general index of consumer prices) were higher than the estimated price, which indicates that the estimated price of wheat does not give producers the purchasing power as it was in the comparison year (2015), and therefore the agricultural price policy is not in favor of wheat producers.The study suggested an optimal distribution of the quantity of wheat imports from the foreign markets, which achieved a reduction by 33 million dollars in the bill of wheat imports in comparison to the actual distribution. The proposed optimal distribution is based on the redistribution of Egyptian wheat imports as follows: 6721.