Is Fair Trade a Fair Deal for Egypt

Emad Hamdy ESLSCA 46 B 1st assignment of international marketing
Is fair trade fair to Egypt

In the article there have been two different opinions about the fair trade
1) fair trade is greatly helping marginal sectors of the Egyptian economy such as farmers and artisans, But the main problems is the lack of governmental support and the wrong approach of the private institutions to the farmers and artisans which if they were rectified the free trade will do very good to the Egyptian economy
2) Fair-trade is doing badly to the Egyptian economy through focusing on marginal and insignificant and non-viable sectors of industry
Also the second opinion states that fair-trade is only a Temp. Solution and it shouldn't be an alternative to an industrial development


Actually, I have a third opinion
What happens in Egypt is that the government is accepting fair trade as a permanent solution which will cause harm to the economy
The free trade and the protectionism both are essential and can be mixed together to Come with a solution to the Egyptian economy in which we can make a huge industrial development and also preserve inherited Crafts
We should classify our needs, choose the industries that we can compete globally in it and then apply free market rules gradually over a period of 10 to 20 years. This will help us improve ourselves gradually by increasing the Competition between domestic and imported goods, for example steel and textile industries can handle the competition firmly until finally after 10 may be 20years you can apply free trade in these markets
Decreasing the protection on these industries will force the producers to increase their quality and work more efficiently to overcome the lower prices of the imported goods
The other side of our needs (where we don't have a chance to excel ) we should also apply free trade rules so as to provide them with low prices for the consumers and also focus on what we really have a chance in its development.
On the other hand in other industries we don't have any experience in which we can accept the free market rules in order to make us focus on more important industries with potential to grow in the Egyptian economy
We maintain the protectionism on the inherited crafts to protect them from extinction.

So this is how we use both protectionism and also free trade to enhance our economy, again they should be mixed because neither one of them alone is enough.