Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Egypt reports that Suez Canal fees have dropped by 40 percent so far in 2024 as a result of the Red Sea difficulties near Yemen which is causing the rerouting of vessels. Actual vessel passages are down by 30 percent. Egypt’s imports of maize are forecast to drop by 25 percent in 2023/24 according to Egypt’s Al Arabiya. Total maize imports are seen as 6.3 MMT, dropping from 8.3 MMT. The drop in imports is said to be due to the lack of foreign currency for private sector importers and not due to any lack of demand. Iraq will not be importing wheat in 2024 due to a seven-month supply on hand and the expected large 2024 domestic wheat crop. 2 MMT...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.