The Initiative was originated by the Joint Declaration in 2002, signed by the Egyptian and Italian Ministries of Agriculture, Yousef Way and Gianni Alemanno.

The Green Corridor is an initiative aiming to strengthen and rationalize the cooperation between Italy and Egypt in the agro-food sector, in order to achieve common profits in the globalization of the markets. The objective is to increase the export of Egyptian fruit and vegetables towards Italy and, through Italy, towards Europe, as well as to open the Egyptian markets to some Italian fruit and vegetables. It is necessary to protect the Italian producers’ productive and commercial plans, and for this reason two concepts have been set: the periodicity and the complementarity. The Egyptian and Italian producers organize together the first part of the chain, guaranteeing that the Egyptian products enter the Italian and European markets in the agreed periods and quantities.

The project, amounting about € 250.000, is financed by the Debt for Development Swap Program, whose fund is used to finance projects promoting the socio-economic development and the safeguard of the national environment.

The idea to create a “Corridor” between Egypt and Europe has origin from the need to satisfy the increasing European demand of fresh fruit and vegetable. This demand is originated from the reduction of the European productive capacity, caused by the recent climatic changes, the constant reduction of the land fertility and the high costs of the manpower.

Europe turns mainly to the productive area of the southern Mediterranean coast. Different Mediterranean countries, like Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey have already gotten well organized and have reached the quality standards required from the European markets.

Also Egypt has to do the same and Italy, with the Green Corridor Pilot Project (GCPP) – the first concrete act decided in the frame of the Initiative – is the first country to give a concrete contribution about it.

The Pilot Project involves the Apulia Region and, in Egypt, the Nubaria area, westbound the Delta of the Nile. It is a sort of test, since it aims to analyze and record the difficulties coming out during the productive and commercial chain, in order to get the necessary information aiming to organize the implementation of a project to be realized at a national level.

The Pilot Project is expected to take 18 months and during this period, producing and exporting about 3.000 tons of fresh products, it will try to:

♦ Test all the stages of the chain, either the ones concerning the production or the ones after the harvesting, like the packaging, the cooling, the internal transport and the shipment towards Europe through the Italian ports;

♦ Further the complementary productions that are not competing with the Italian producers;

♦ Guarantee the export to the small farmers, beginning from the Nubaria’s ones, improving in this way the socio-economic condition of the inhabitants of the area;

♦ Build a packing centre in Nubaria that will be at producers’ disposal.

The Project achieved already a concrete result with the first shipment to Italy, on June 14th, of 14 tons of table grape produced in Egypt. The entire chain, productive and commercial, was organized under the supervision of Confcooperative Puglia and in collaboration with the Agronomic Institute of Mediterranean (IAM) of Bari.

Of course this first shipment respects all the specifics of the Project. The traceability system has been applied that is required from the European law and realized ad hoc for this Pilot Project. This system is built in the structure of the labels that contains also the website (www.green-corridor.com) and that have been stuck on each pack of the product.

On the occasion of the arrival of this first shipment a brief ceremony will be held, it is organized by IAM Bari and will be attended by three representatives of the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and by an high Apulia Region representative.

For Egypt, the investment in this sector means to create new vacancies, to increase the opportunities for the Egyptian operators to acquire new skills and to contribute significantly to the growth of the Egyptian GDP.