Economic Evaluation of Olive Oil Presses in Siwa Oasis

El Sentresy, M. A.; Ragab, M. A.; El Shatla, H.S.A.; El Sharawy, R. A.T.I.

doi:esm.2024.400031/10.21608

Economic Evaluation of Olive Oil Presses in Siwa Oasis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Professor of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University

² Professor of Economics, Department of Economic Studies, Desert Research Center

³ Agricultural Engineer at the Agricultural Administration in Ashmoun

esm.2024.400031/10.21608

Abstract

The olive oil industry in Egypt occupied an important economic position in the food industry sector, as the value of processing and preserving olives was estimated at 73.47 billion pounds, representing about 12.38% of the total value of food industry production, which amounted to about 593.53 billion pounds during the year 2019.
The research aims to:
The research aims in general to try to identify the feasibility of investing in the activities of olive oil presses in the Siwa Oasis by studying indicators of economic evaluation and their impact on development to identify the extent of their economic viability.
The research relied on:
conducting an inventory of some olive oil presses in the Siwa Oasis, and this industry is characterized by the seasonality of production due to the coincidence of the operating periods with the harvest periods of the olive harvest in the oasis, which amounted to three months on average. 2018/ 2019.
The results showed:
The possibility of expanding the establishment of semi-automatic and automatic olive oil presses, which means the possibility of future expansion in them, and it was also found that the cost of creating a job opportunity in semi-automatic olive presses in Siwa for the2018/2019 season amounted to about 441.1 thousand pounds / job opportunity. Which is attributed to the high density of invested capital in relation to the number of workers in the semi-automatic olive presses in Siwa Oasis. The current value of the net cost of the project in foreign currencies amounted to about $ 143,000, indicating that the inflows are greater than the outflows, while the foreign exchange index for the contemporary amounted to about 15.4 pounds / $, and this percentage reflects the rate of social return for foreign exchange. Productivity of one unit of net foreign exchange paid from the project.
It was also found that the automatic presses achieved an added value of about 6.6 million pounds, which means that there is an economic surplus, in addition to the existence of a social surplus.
The results of the added value also showed that it is greater than the wage value of automatic olive presses in Siwa Oasis, and it is evident from the study of indicators of the relative efficiency of automatic olive presses in Siwa Oasis during the 2018/2019 season, that the current value of the net cost of the project in foreign currencies amounted to about $ 1.7 million. This indicates that the inflows are greater than the outflows, while the contemporary foreign exchange index reached about 17.1 pounds / dollar.
The recommendations of the research can be summarized as follows:
- Training and raising the skills of those in charge of the process of manufacturing olive oil, which indicates the creation of individuals with the ability to export.
- Control of olive oil exports, which means preserving the reputation of the Siwi olive oil in particular, and the Egyptian olive oil in general.
- Providing financial support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade to provide production requirements.
- Preparing a database and information for agricultural statistics and data related to olive oil.

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