Exchange Rate Policy in Egypt Since 1973 and Its Significance for Agriculture

摘要

The exchange rate policy in Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s, although having demonstrated some degree of flexibility, has been marred by persistent overvaluation, particularly of the government accounting rate, with consequent understatement of the value of goods traded, of costs of subsidies to consumers of traded goods, of implicit taxes on agricultural produces, of subsidies to those same producers, and of the fiscal implications of state trading in international markets. At the same time, however, the domestic pricing system has been all but divorced from international prices as measured by any sort of rate of exchange. It is this very insulation of the agricultural sector from the influence of international markets which is the central feature of agricultural repression.