Ahmed Kamel – Egypt Daily News
Egyptian cotton exports have soared dramatically, rising 300 percent year-on-year during the period from September to the end of November in the 2025–2026 export season. The surge comes amid a significant decline in global prices for Egyptian long-staple cotton, prompting international textile companies to expand their purchases and stockpiles.
The current export season, which began on September 1, 2025 and runs through November 30, 2026, has seen intense foreign demand. According to the document, total foreign purchase offers during the 13th week of the season ending November 29 reached 4,145 metric tons.
This pushed total export commitments from the beginning of the season up to the end of November to 19,400 metric tons, compared with just 4,700 tons during the same period last year, marking a nearly threefold increase.
India ranked as the largest importer of Egyptian cotton with 7,500 tons, followed by China with 6,000 tons and Pakistan with 1,800 tons.
Price Drop Spurs Foreign Buying
Mofreh El-Beltagy, former chairman of the Egyptian Cotton Exporters Association, said the sharp increase in export volumes during the first three months of the season was directly tied to a decline in Egyptian cotton prices on global markets. He explained that foreign companies saw a “window of opportunity” to buy and store high-quality Egyptian cotton at discounted rates.
Average export prices this season stand at around 150 cents per pound, down from 160–170 cents during the same period last year.
El-Beltagy attributed the price drop to the government’s decision to cancel the guaranteed minimum purchase price for cotton, an intervention that previously protected farmers from price volatility. Without the state-set floor price, private traders gained control over contracts and imposed significantly lower purchase prices, offering roughly EGP 8,000 per qantar this season, compared to EGP 12,000 last year.
Last season, the government had set a guaranteed price of EGP 12,000 per qantar, but private traders refused to buy cotton at that rate, arguing it exceeded global prices. The state ultimately lowered the price to EGP 10,000 per qantar and granted farmers an EGP 2,000 subsidy per qantar to bridge the gap.
Government Plans to Sell Cotton Stocks Through the Commodity Exchange
The government is expected to offer 20,000 qintars of cotton for sale on the commodity exchange in the final quarter of 2025. This is part of a larger 500,000-qintar stockpile that the state accumulated last season after both traders and the government itself temporarily halted purchases due to pricing disputes.
El-Beltagy warned that persistently low cotton prices could cause farmers to further reduce cultivated areas next year. “Current prices are unfair to farmers,” he stressed.
Cotton Cultivation Falls to Historic Lows
Official data from the Ministry of Agriculture indicates that Egyptian cotton cultivation has already dropped to unprecedented levels this season, declining by roughly 50 percent year-on-year.
By the second week of June midway through the planting window, which runs from mid-March to late June, only 131,000 feddans had been cultivated, compared with 290,000 feddans during the same period last year, a sharp 54 percent drop.
Historically, Egyptian cotton cultivation reached its lowest level in 2016 at around 136,000 feddans. During the 1980s, Egypt cultivated more than one million feddans of the crop, which was once considered a cornerstone of the national economy.
This season’s cultivated areas are distributed across 110,000 feddans in the Delta (Lower Egypt) and 21,000 feddans in Upper Egypt.
As prices remain depressed and cultivated areas shrink to near-historic lows, experts warn that Egypt may face further erosion of its long-standing position in the global cotton market unless policies are adjusted to stabilize the sector and protect farmers.
