समाचार Samāchār · Business · 15 November 2026

Goyal takes 132 businesses to Cairo. $6.5 billion of trade with Egypt is too small

The Commerce Minister opens a two-day visit to Egypt and co-chairs the Joint Trade Committee. Egypt has invested only $11.5 million in India since 2000.

India and Egypt trade about $6.5 billion a year. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal says that is a beginning and not a destination. He reached Cairo on Saturday for a two-day visit with a 132-member business delegation, PTI reports. He began at the Heliopolis War Cemetery, where 3,727 of the 4,000 soldiers buried or commemorated are Indian. On Sunday he co-chairs the 7th India-Egypt Joint Trade Committee with Egypt’s Minister of Investment and Foreign Trade, Mohamed Farid Saleh.

The numbers show the gap. India exported $3.87 billion to Egypt in 2025-26 and imported $2.60 billion. India sells meat and poultry, petroleum products, organic chemicals, cotton and machinery. It buys crude oil, fertilisers, cotton and mineral products. About 70 Indian companies work in Egypt with more than $5 billion invested, according to PIB. Egypt’s investment in India from April 2000 to June 2026 is $11.5 million.

The first meetings point to where new money can go. Goyal met Ahmed ElSewedy, president and CEO of ElSewedy Electric, on Saturday. He named electrical equipment, smart meters and data centres as areas to build together. The programme also covers the Joint Business Council, a business forum, Afreximbank and an Egypt-India startups forum.

Goyal placed the visit inside a wider trade push. In five years India has put pacts in force with Mauritius, Australia, the UAE, Oman, the EFTA bloc, New Zealand and the UK. He said the agreement with the EU will be signed next month. Talks are under way with Canada, Chile, the SACU group, Mercosur and the EAEU.

Egypt sits on the Suez route and at the door of Africa and the Arab world. That is a market for what India makes and a supplier of what India needs. The task now is a two-way flow: more Indian goods out, and Egyptian capital in.

What a founder takes from it: Export-first India needs many lanes, and Egypt opens one to Africa and the Suez route. The real gap is capital: over $5 billion of Indian money is invested there and almost nothing flows back. Power equipment, smart meters and data centres are where to watch.