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Egypt BALANCE OF PAYMENTS AND MAIN SOURCES OF FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Balance of payments transactions are usually tabulated under
two broad categories, current account and capital account. Current
account includes visible (merchandise) trade as well as invisible
items, such as tourism, shipping, and profits and other moneys
earned overseas.
In Egypt the credit side of the current account balance was
heavily influenced by four items: oil, the Suez Canal, tourism, and
workers' remittances. Their share in total resources (GDP plus net
imports) climbed to about 45 percent in the early 1980s, from 6
percent in 1974. It declined afterward but continued to be the
backbone of the economy. These four items also contributed
considerably more to Egypt's foreign exchange income than they did
to the country's total resources. A common characteristic of these
items was that they were "exogenous" resources, i.e., their
productivity had little relationship to Egyptian labor, and their
income was highly dependent on market and political forces beyond
the control of the Egyptian government (see
table 11, Appendix).
Data as of December 1990
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