Egypt’s high inflation constraining aquaculture

Editor/Mohamed Shihab

"Foreign exchange remains an issue in Egypt and other countries that rely on any form of imports to support their aquaculture industries."The growth of Egypt’s aquaculture industry and, therefore, the country’s seafood consumption have been hampered by high inflation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

According to a recent USDA analysis of Egypt’s aquaculture market, surging inflation is the main reason for a 45 percent increase in fish and seafood prices between 2022 and 2024 that has suppressed Egypt’s fish consumption per capita by 13 percent in 2022 and 13.4 percent in 2023 compared to 2021 consumption levels.

USDA said starting in 2022, Egyptian aquaculture operations, which account for 80 percent of the North African country’s fish output and 67 percent of Africa’s aquaculture output, respectively, began to suffer from “shortages in foreign currency, which inadvertently produced high inflation rates.”The high inflation triggered a spike in raw input prices, with feed becoming harder to source, “which inadvertently affected the production of fish,” according to the USDA.

“Foreign exchange remains an issue in Egypt and other countries that rely on any form of imports to support their aquaculture industries,” Food and Agriculture Organization Senior Advisor Lahsen Ababouch told SeafoodSource. “In the case of Egypt, the country relies on imports to meet its fish feed demand that is estimated at 1.3 million metric tons [MT].”