Egypt achieves a significant growth of 34% in volume of date fruit exports to reach US$37.548 million by end of 2014, the country's Food Export Council said. From the same vein, Tameem El-Dawy – Egyptian Food Export Council's Marketing Manager and IT Consultant – stated that Egypt's 2014 date exports are the highest in three years. Egypt's Industrial Modernization Centre adopts a programme to establish export blocs for honey in Tanta, molasses in Minya, as well as dates and olive in Siwa, aiming to reach an international trade mark for the four products. The trademark can raise the country's revenues from honey, molasses, dates and olive products to US$5 billion approximately, El-Dawy noted. The Egyptian official further added that around 38.000 tonnes of date fruits were exported in 2014, marking a 46.15 increase from the amounts exported during 2013. Moreover, El-Dawy said Morocco tops list of importers of Egyptian date fruits, with imports worth US$26.2 million to represent 87% of Egypt's total date exports. Indonesia comes second with imports of around US$11.7 million of Egyptian dates. Malaysia ranked third, recording imports worth US$6.2 million. The total value of Egyptian food exports reached US$ 2.9 billion in 2014, marking an increase of 6%, up from 2013 that hit US$ 2.8 billion. Furthermore, El-Dawy pointed out that the Egyptian Food Export Council has been working with the regional office for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) for 2 years on a project to develop the country's date fruit sector. This project includes all the production process until the international marketing stage and helping the producers to enter into the global date fruit markets.
