UNIDO's ETRACE assisted more than 5 million people in Egypt

UNIDO's Egyptian Traceability Centre for Agro-Industrial Exports (ETRACE) ensures that food products are safe for consumption and suited for export. ETRACE helps farmers and producers comply with international quality, safety and traceability standards and regulations.

Products from developing countries are often not suited for export: challenges related to food safety must be addressed to ensure that these products are of high quality and conform to international standards and regulations. One of UNIDO’s key activities is to build trade capacity by strengthening capacities in quality, standardization and conformity assessment, both at institutional and enterprise level, in order to foster the ability of developing countries to enter global food value chains.

Launched in July 2004 in Cairo, Egypt, ETRACE is a joint project of UNIDO, the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Italian Development Cooperation and the private sector. ETRACE helps Egyptian farmers, food producers and packers along the food value chain to meet European and international food quality, safety and traceability standards, ensuring that products are safe and do not encounter barriers to trade.

The Centre provides financial and technical assistance to support farms, packing houses and food manufacturers in applying traceability systems, upgrading their technology and management systems to control the use of chemicals and in acquiring certification for their exports, thus contributing to domestic food security and facilitating access to global markets.

To this day, ETRACE has provided support to 90 of the 200 packing houses in the country (which account for approximately 85 per cent of all exports) as well as to 8 pilot food processors. Through them, the project has already reached over 45,000 farms and thus more than 5 million people. In addition, ETRACE has assisted the General Organization for Import and Export Control (GOIEC) in establishing the national traceability system.

Against this background, and taken into account ETRACE's successes, the Italian Development Cooperation has agreed to support a new project that will extend the Centre’s activities and provide assistance in establishing similar structures in other developing countries and countries in transition.

For more information, please contact Gerardo Patacconi

By Andrea Liebman