Impact of the Ukrainian War and the Global Crisis on Food Security in Egypt

The Russian-Ukrainian war drove up the World prices of food products to their highest levels ever. The present study investigates the impact of this global crisis on Egypt using the data descriptive analysis approach. In view of achieving that goal, the study shed the light on the fluctuations of World prices and their reflection on the Egyptian economy. Particular attention was given to the trade movement and stock changes of wheat as the most strategic commodity for Egypt since Egypt stands as the biggest importer of wheat at the global level.
The partial equilibrium model was adopted to assess the impact of the current global crisis on food security and poverty in Egypt through a number of indexes including the indexes of economic efficiency, community economic welfare and the realized  government’s proceeds from wheat import taxes at the national level.
The most important findings obtained by this study were the following:
The impulses of World prices have been reflected on local prices. Moreover, the stock of wheat in Egypt declined from an average of 2.7 million tons over the period 2019 – 2021, to 1.9 million tons in 2022. In addition, the prices of food products in Egypt soared to unprecedented levels immediately after the beginning of the Russian – Ukrainian war reaching an inflation rate of 20% in March 2022 or their highest inflation rate in five years.  
The application of the partial equilibrium model also revealed the negative effect of the crisis on the indexes of economic efficiency in Egypt as the net loss of production, the net loss of consumption and the net social loss registered an estimated increase of 23380% between 2021 and 2022, The indexes of community economic welfare were also negatively affected by the global crisis,  as the surplus production benefits realized in 2021 turned into a loss with the surplus production dropping by – 760% between 2021 and 2022. Similarly the loss in the consumption surplus rose by 368% in 2022 in comparison to 2021. The negative impact of the crisis was moreover reflected on the realized government’s proceeds, turning them from benefits to losses with a declining rate estimated at 631%. In addition, the foreign currency balance registered a deficit in 2022 in comparison to a surplus in 2021, as the bill of wheat imports surged by 996% between 2021 and 2022.