Egypt's exports to China nearly tripled in H1 2026, but the deficit still widened

Egypt's exports to China reached $840.8m in the first half of 2026, up from $280.5m in the same period of 2025 — an increase of 199.8% — according to Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) figures reported by Daily News Egypt. Ahram Online, reporting the same release, put the rise at approximately 200%. Total trade between the two countries came to $11.3bn over the six months, up 21.5% from $9.3bn a year earlier.

The data was released to coincide with Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Cairo. Ahram Online described it as a two-day visit, Xi's first to Egypt in a decade, timed to the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Daily News Egypt reported that Xi was received at Cairo International Airport by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and that Egypt was the first Arab and African country to recognise the People's Republic of China, in 1956.

The export figure is the smaller half of the ledger. Egypt's imports from China reached $10.4bn in H1 2026, up 14.3% from $9.1bn, Daily News Egypt reported from the same CAPMAS release. Measured against each other, exports grew by about $560m year-on-year and imports by roughly $1.3bn. On the rounded totals as published, the goods gap with China therefore widened rather than narrowed: from about $8.8bn in the first half of 2025 to about $9.6bn in the first half of 2026.

What the export figure is actually counting

Close to three-fifths of the $840.8m sat in a single category. CAPMAS put mineral fuels, oils and distillation products at $494m, according to Daily News Egypt, which listed the five largest Egyptian export lines to China as follows.

• Mineral fuels, oils and distillation products — $494m
• Vegetables and fruit — $150.6m
• Cotton and vegetable textile fibres — $76.4m
• Natural calcium phosphates — $31m
• Organic and inorganic chemical products — $21m

That composition matters for how much weight the headline percentage can carry. Four of the five lines are unprocessed or lightly processed commodities, and the largest is a fuel category whose dollar value moves with volumes and prices Egypt does not set. Neither report broke down what drove the increase in fuel shipments, so the split between higher volumes and higher prices is not established in the published data. The base is also small: a near-tripling of $280.5m still leaves total exports to China below $1bn for the half-year.

The import side is where the value sits

On the other side of the ledger, electrical and mechanical machinery and equipment accounted for $4.1bn of Egypt's imports from China in the first half, Daily News Egypt reported. Cars, tractors and motorcycles came to $1.2bn, iron and steel products to $930.7m, plastics and related products to $524m, and organic and inorganic chemicals to $423.7m.

The machinery line alone was worth close to five times everything Egypt sold to China over the same six months. That is the structural point the percentage growth does not change: the relationship is still one in which Egypt buys capital and consumer goods and sells raw and semi-processed inputs.

FAMSUN's $100m and the Cairo 3A tie-up

Two manufacturing commitments were announced around the visit. FAMSUN, a privately owned Chinese agricultural technology firm that supplies aqua, pig and poultry feed systems and food engineering equipment, signed an agreement to invest $100m in local manufacturing and technology transfer in Egypt with Cairo 3A, an Egyptian private grain trader and manufacturer of agricultural commodities, Ahram Online reported.

The agreement aims to develop an integrated production chain from grain storage and handling to processing, feed production and downstream industries, according to Cairo 3A CEO Hazem Zayed. It covers silos and grain storage, drying systems, agricultural equipment, intelligent control and monitoring systems, post-harvest technologies, land reclamation, deep grain processing, starch and glucose production, oil extraction, and livestock and aquaculture production, according to Ahram Online. FAMSUN has already put more than $75m into Egypt, which the report said takes its combined existing and newly agreed investment to $175m. The published account did not give a timetable for the $100m or say when construction would start.

Jieya's $67m in the Sokhna zone

The second commitment carries more operational detail. Jieya Egypt is investing $67m in an industrial complex for single-use healthcare supplies in the Sokhna Integrated Zone, part of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, Ahram Online reported. The Cabinet Media Centre said the plant will be built on 160,000 square metres, is expected to create around 450 direct jobs, and to reach an annual production capacity of 8.1 billion single-use healthcare items. Production is expected to begin within two years.

Both projects fit a pattern Egypt has been trying to encourage: manufacturing capacity placed inside the country rather than portfolio money that can leave quickly. The Cabinet Media Centre described the Jieya complex as part of a push to localise value-added industries, attract foreign investment and transfer modern technologies, according to Ahram Online. Whether the capacity is aimed primarily at the domestic market or at export is not stated in the published accounts.

What the numbers do and do not measure

The $100m and the $67m are capital commitments, announced but not yet spent, and they are measured over the life of a project rather than over a reporting period. Together they come to $167m. The $9.6bn goods gap for the first half of 2026 is a flow of trade already recorded over six months. Setting one against the other is not a like-for-like comparison, but it gives the scale: the two announced plants amount to a fraction of a single half-year's imbalance.

CAPMAS also published transfer figures alongside the trade data. Remittances from Egyptians working in China came to $23.3m in the 2024/25 financial year, up from $19.5m the year before, while transfers by Chinese nationals in Egypt reached $3.5m, up from $3.1m, Daily News Egypt reported. Those are small sums next to the trade totals, and they underline how much of the relationship runs through goods rather than people. What the published data does not show is whether the export surge holds through the second half of the year, or whether the announced factories reach production on the timelines given.