ABU DHABI // Egypt will on Friday begin its attempt to attract foreign investment following four years of stagnation since the beginning of the Arab Spring.
One hundred and sixty delegates from the UAE – some of whom will be representing western companies – as well as businessmen and politicians from all over the world will be present at the three-day Egypt Economic Development Conference.
A UAE delegation, headed by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, will attend the conference, entitled “Egypt The Future”, and prominent businessmen from the UAE will take part in workshops with their Egyptian counterparts.
UAE speakers include Mohammed Alabbar, chairman of Emaar Properties, Ahmad Julfar, Etisalat’s chief executive, Arif Navqi, Abraaj Group’s founder, Shayne Nelson, Emirates NBD’s group chief executive, and Habib Haddad, Wamda’s founding chief executive.
The Arabian Gulf will be the largest regional contingent at the conference, overshadowing Europe, which dominated foreign investment in Egypt before the Arab Spring in 2011.
Cooperation among the UAE, Egypt and an unnamed African country is planned to restore Egypt’s economy and stability, the Egyptian ambassador to the UAE, Ehab Hammouda, said.
The plan is for the UAE to provide financial assistance while Egypt supplies labour.
“Egypt can provide the technical experience,” Mr Hammouda said. “We have been working in Africa for a long period of time, our history here is very rich and we have a very good reputation in these countries.
“We will start very soon once we check which country and which project and we can expect it to begin by the end of the year.”
Projects in agriculture, housing and pharmaceuticals are in the pipeline, with Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda as potential beneficiaries.
“Egypt is very famous in pharmaceutical production and it is welcomed in African countries because the price is a lot less than from Europe,” Mr Hammouda said.
“This will give Egyptians more jobs like in the Suez Canal project and other petrochemical production projects.”
The number of labourers used exceeded five million so it helps economic problems on one side and solves the problem of unemployment in Egypt on the other, which we suffer a lot from.”
The UAE has a history of helping Egypt.
“The UAE provided us with a loan of US$4.9 billion {Dh17.9bn] to encourage and support the Egyptian economy until 2013,” Mr Hammouda said. “After that, it organised the Egyptian-Gulf Investment forum in Cairo to shed light on the Egyptian economic problems and to attract businessmen to Egypt. UAE projects in Egypt are vital and increasing, in medical, infrastructure and housing. We’ve had about 300 new buses in Egypt and another 300 will be produced locally.”
The next project, by Arabtec, is to build a million housing units in Egypt.
“It will take many years and a lot of unemployed capacity from society,” Mr Hammouda said. “And this conference will give the opportunity and pave the way towards a better economical future for Egypt.”
But the main target for the country now is to attract investment.
“Egypt is not willing to spend more time on economic assistance from other countries,” he added. “We want to create a better ground of stability and security for the region.”
A UAE delegation, headed by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, will attend the conference and prominent businessmen from the UAE will take part in workshops with their Egyptian counterparts.
“You need a politically stable Egypt but political stability has to go hand-in-hand with economic prosperity and recovery,” said Prof Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, political science professor at UAE University.
“The conference is meant to address what is needed: to stabilise Egypt economically and provide it with a few investments and incentives and the people going there will have to dig into their pockets and come up with some concrete financial economic help that Egypt needs to strengthen the economic leg of the transition period. It’s a very shaky leg at the moment, in terms of security, politics and economics, so they have to attract the investment.”
More than 270 of 1,300 foreign officials registered for the event will fly in from the six oil exporting states of the Gulf.
The conference is seen as a milestone of the government’s medium term economic development plan, aimed at improving social services to Egyptians.
cmalek@thenational.ae
