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Egypt’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has approved a pres­i­den­tial decree on join­ing the Inter­na­tional Agree­ment on Olive Oil and Table Olives. The pres­i­den­tial decree (no.560/2017) which was signed in Cairo on Jan­u­ary 8 will enti­tle Egypt to full mem­ber­ship in the Inter­na­tional Olive Coun­cil (IOC) once the gov­ern­ment has deposited the instru­ment of rat­i­fi­ca­tion with the United Nations in New York.

Egypt first joined the IOC in 1964 but in 2017 its mem­ber­ship was revoked after it failed to sign an agree­ment on changes to stan­dards of olive cul­ti­va­tion, pro­duc­tion and trad­ing.

Under the agree­ment, Egypt will ben­e­fit from finan­cial grants to sup­port the country’s olive cul­ti­va­tion, includ­ing a new ini­tia­tive to plant one mil­lion olive trees as part of a project aimed at cul­ti­vat­ing 1.5 mil­lion trees in the West­ern Desert.

The Egypt­ian olive oil indus­try has grown con­sid­er­ably in recent years and while some IOC mem­bers saw a drop in olive oil pro­duc­tion in 2017, Egypt’s pro­duc­tion increased by 21 per­cent. Demand for Egypt­ian olive oil also rose fol­low­ing the country’s cur­rency flota­tion; an ini­tia­tive which aimed to stim­u­late the country’s econ­omy. The flota­tion gave pro­duc­ers greater export oppor­tu­ni­ties and helped to secure a $12 bil­lion loan from the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund.

Hishem el Hos­sary, under­sec­re­tary of the com­mit­tee of agri­cul­ture, irri­ga­tion, food secu­rity and ani­mal health com­mented on the Egypt­ian government’s web­site that being a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tional Olive Coun­cil had ben­e­fited Egyp­t’s agri­cul­tural and olive oil indus­try and the over­all econ­omy, and led to the improve­ment of the phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of Egypt­ian olive oil.

In April 2017 Pales­tine became the lat­est coun­try to sign the IOC agree­ment join­ing Argentina, Alge­ria, Euro­pean Union, Iran, Israel, Jor­dan, Lebanon, Libya, Mon­tene­gro, Pales­tine, Tunisia, Turkey and Uruguay.

The cur­rent IOC agree­ment was re-drafted by the United Nations Con­fer­ence for Trade and Devel­op­ment (UNCTAD) in Switzer­land in 2015. It came into effect in Jan­u­ary 2017 and is valid till Decem­ber 2026. The new agree­ment was mod­i­fied, con­densed and made sim­pler to encour­age more coun­tries to join the IOC. The orig­i­nal agree­ment was set up in 1955 and was revised in 1963, 1979, 1986 and 2005.

The IOC aims to improve the chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of olive oil, per­fect pro­duc­tion and improve har­vest­ing tech­niques. It also pro­vides tech­ni­cal assis­tance on export projects in order to over­come obsta­cles to inter­na­tional trade.

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