Dubai: Egypt will honour all trade agreements with its international partners "diligently" and continue to offer a competitive trading edge, said Abdul Rahman Raouf, minister councillor at the Egyptian Embassy.

Egyptian food exports to the UAE touched $160 million (Dh587.58 million) to $170 million, he said. Egypt has a "competitive edge" in exports to the GCC in terms of zero tariffs and international food manufacturing standards, he said.

"The revolution in Egypt started a stable, democratic new era," he said at a press conference on Gulf Food 2011, the region's largest industry event, referring to the 18-day protests that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak.

In the long term, the political reform expected in Egypt will attract investors to a more stable environment, he added.

"A transformation started in Egypt. The political gains mitigate the economic losses," Raouf said. He added that Egypt's main investor attractions remain the same: A large consumer market, access to Comesa (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) and the EU and a young population eager to rebuild the country.

With the current sector strikes in Egypt, production and import levels will likely increase, he said. "We have a stock system, a reserve of three to six months of basic essentials, he assured.

Egypt will have the largest Mena pavilion at Gulf Food, shaped like the infamous Tahrir Square where the protests raged, with 93 exhibitors spread over 1,450 square metres, he said.

"I call on people to buy more Egyptian products," Raouf said, amid rising global prices of wheat and corn. Wheat climbed to $9.1675 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on February 14, the highest price since August 2008, and has surged 66 per cent the past year. That compares with an 88 per cent gain for corn and a 43 per cent jump in soybeans. Sugar prices have doubled since the end of May. Global corn stockpiles are forecast by the US Department of Agriculture to drop at the end of this season to a four-year low, while reserves of wheat will slump 10 per cent from a year earlier as harvests lag behind demand. Soybean inventories are set to drop to a two-year low.

— With inputs from Bloomberg