Egypt's exports to Iraq will reach $1.2 billion this year, compared with $400 million in 1999, Egyptian Economy and Foreign Trade Minister Yussef Butros-Ghali said Wednesday.
"Egyptian exports will reach two billion dollars next year," Butros-Ghali added at a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart Mohammed Mahdi Saleh, the official Egyptian news agency MENA said.
Egypt's main exports to Iraq include cereals, sugar, medicines, medical equipment and cars.
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 force 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. Cairo has regularly called for an end to economic sanctions on Iraq, which were imposed in 1990. - (AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
