First Dates Festival in Bahariya Oasis kicks off Thursday

CAIRO – 11 November 2021: Activities of the first Dates Festival kicked off Thursday in Bahariya Oasis in Giza in coordination with the Giza Chamber of Commerce.

It is planned to plant one million palm trees in Bahariya Oasis by April 2022. 

The event is attended by ministers of industry, commerce, agriculture, local development and supply, in addition to the governors of Giza, Cairo, the New Valley, Aswan and Marsa Matrouh, and the ambassadors of the countries of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Indonesia, Morocco and Malaysia.

It comes within the framework of supporting the palm plantation sector and the production of dates in Egypt, which is the largest producer of dates in the world. The Bahariya Oasis City witnessed development work to the date storage refrigerators, as the oases include more than three million palm trees that produce various types of dates.

It is worth mentioning that dates in Egypt are considered a strategic crop, as Egypt ranks first in the world with a total of 18 percent of the global production of dates, and first at the Arab level with a total of 24 percent, in addition to the continuous increase in the number of palm trees in all Egypt’s governorates producing dates.

Located 365 kilometers to the southwest of Giza, the Bahariya Oasis is one of the Egypt’s Western Desert oases. It encompasses 400 springs of mineral and sulfur water It is linked to Giza and Greater Cairo by the Cairo Desert Oasis Road. For mineral and sulfur water, warm and cold, and its center is the city of Bawiti.

Bahariya Oasis includes about 38 date factories, which contribute to the production of what the local market needs or export, where the export force is about 50,000 tons, due to the distinctive color and taste of Oasis dates, where about 30 types are available, including Al-Majdool and Al-Barhi.