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Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Egypt on Saturday for a two-day tour after a high-level state visit to the United States. This is his first bilateral trip to Egypt.
Apart from Modi, four other Indian prime ministers have visited Egypt – Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, PV Narasimha Rao in 1995, Indir Kumar Gujral in 1997, and Mahmohan Singh in 2009 (to attend the NAM summit). Bilateral relations between India and Egypt were first established on August 18, 1947. The two countries share a history of cooperation on bilateral, regional and global issues.
Egypt is one of India’s most important trading partners in the Arab-African continent. The partnership between the two countries is an important step in the direction of alliances with the Arab world.
The India-Egypt Bilateral Trade Agreement has been in force since March 1978. High-level exchanges between the two countries continued after the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, and bilateral trade has increased more than fivefold in the past ten years.
According to reports from the Indian Embassy in Cairo, more than 7 million Indians live in Egypt. From oil to infrastructure and telecommunications to consumer goods, more than $162 billion worth of goods and services are traded between India and the Arab world on a bilateral basis. India imports 60 percent of the crude oil from the Arab country, while the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE) provides easy access to markets in Europe, Africa and the Gulf.
A total of 4.8 million barrels of crude oil are transported and transported through the canal every day, of which 5,00,000 barrels per day are transported to India. At present, Egypt controls 20 percent of the global container trade in the Suez Canal. With the help of Egypt, much of India’s foreign trade could be passed along the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden.
According to embassy reports, bilateral trade between India and Egypt in 2018-2019 was US$4.55 billion, US$4.5 billion in 2019-20 and US$4.15 billion in 2020-2021. After the epidemic, bilateral trade expanded rapidly in 2021-2022, reaching 7.26 billion US dollars, up 75% from the 2020-2021 fiscal year. India’s exports to Egypt during this period amounted to $3.74 billion, an increase of 65 percent compared to the same period in the 2020-2021 fiscal year.
The Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) stated that bilateral trade reached nearly US$4.4 billion, of which US$2.9 billion were exports from India and US$1.5 billion were imports from Egypt to India during the period from April 2022 to January. 2023 of the 2022-23 fiscal year. India emerged as Egypt’s sixth largest trading partner in the 2021-22 fiscal year, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).
At present, Indian investments amount to more than $3.2 billion in Egypt. The embassy report states that “about 50 Indian companies have invested in various sectors in Egypt with combined investments exceeding US$3.2 billion. Indian companies provide direct and indirect job opportunities for nearly 35,000 Egyptians. Indian companies have also implemented projects in the energy and telecom sectors in Egypt.” At the same time, Egyptian investments in India amount to $37 million.
India’s leading IT company, Tech Mahindra, established India’s first global delivery center in Egypt in December 2022. Three other Indian companies – ReNew Power, ACME and Ocior Energy – signed agreements worth US$18 billion in ‘green hydrogen’ in 2022. 2022.
In an interview with an Indian media outlet, Egyptian Ambassador Wael Mohamed Awad Hamed said, “Green hydrogen is the fuel of the future. I believe we are building a very strong partnership in the energy sector and it will provide better opportunities for our economic relationship.”
Considering the issue of food security on April 14, 2022, Egypt included India in the list of approved countries that can supply wheat to the country by ending a long-hanging non-tariff barrier. Although the ban on wheat exports in India made it difficult to complete the shipment, 80,000 metric tons of wheat were shipped to Egypt till June 2022.
Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world. Inflation hit the country at a five-year high of 21 percent, driving up prices of commodities and items of daily use, including milk and basic foodstuffs, as a result of the pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war.
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