Egyptian exports to Iraq will rise to US$1.2 billion this year, compared to $400 million in 1999, Economy and Foreign Trade Minister Yussef Butros-Ghali said.
"Egyptian exports will reach two billion dollars next year," Butros-Ghali said at a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart Mohammed Mahdi Saleh, according to a report in Al Ahram.
Saleh was in Egypt for a three-day meeting of the two countries' joint commission to discuss ways of expanding "economic and trade links between the two brother nations," the Iraqi news agency INA reported before Saleh left for Egypt.
Iraq broke off relations with Egypt after Cairo joined the US-led alliance opposing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But Egypt has become one of Iraq's major economic partners since 1996, when the United Nations started letting Iraq sell limited amounts of oil for food, medicine and other necessities.
Iraq severed diplomatic relations with Cairo during the Gulf war, but economic cooperation between the two countries was revived more than three years ago. An Egyptian official announced in May that contracts worth nearly 100 million dollars had been agreed at an Egyptian commercial fair held in Baghdad. –(Albawaba-MEBG)
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
