| Speech By The Consul General of the Arab Republic of
Egypt Mr. Aly Galal Bassiouny
Before The Luncheon
Meeting on A Rising Economy With Promising Potential For Hong Kong Business And Investment |
Egypt- A Potential Hub Regionally and Globally
The industrial base in, Egypt extends
from labor-intensive industries through technology-intensive industries, to energy
intensive industries. There is a number of emerging high-skill service industries such as
financial services and software development. Egypt enjoys competitive advantage not only
in natural resources but also in several manufacturing industries including textiles,
engineering, metals, pharmaceuticals and food processing.
Trends show that FDI in manufacturing for
domestic market and labour intensive export-oriented FDI offer the best prospects.
Egypt is seeking to upgrade FDI into higher
value-added production. It has promising potential to attract significant FDI involving
integrated international production.
Egypt is in a unique position to become an
export hub especially for the Middle East and Africa.
According to UNCTAD Investment Policy
Review on Egypt in 1999, the potential for export is great and there are particular
product groups with promising prospect to develop global production in the near future
including textiles, pharmaceuticals, tourism, electronics and software.
Textiles &
Garments
Textile activity dates back to more than a century - the
main strategic competitive advantage is Egypt's abundant supply of competitively priced
labor as well as its production of the world's finest cotton.
Garment manufacture is a prominent industrial activity in
Egypt, and is growing swiftly on the strength of its domestic textile industry and its
high quality of cotton.
Egypt is one of the largest growers of cotton fibre and
produces a third of the world's finest cotton.
Pharmaceuticals
Pharmaceuticals have ranked Egypt's annual
list of most dynamic export products for the last decade. The industry is growing at an
annual rate of 14% in the 1990s.
Although the domestic market absorbs the
main share of production, a strong shift to exports was registered in 1997-1998 as it
achieved a 150% growth rate.
This export trend is due to the quality and
price competitiveness of the Egyptian products. The export market growing trend is also
attributed to the opening of new markets in USA, Russia and Eastern Europe in addition to
African and Arab countries.
The industry has a well developed niche
over 40 years of operation as well as Egypt's large pool of highly trained doctors,
pharmacists, engineers and skilled technicians.
Egypt is well prepared to be a gateway to
the growing pharmaceutical markets of the Middle East, Arab and African countries.
Electronics and
Information Technology
As we are formulating a comprehensive and
dynamic vision for the country's future, Egypt has launched a new national project for
technological revival. One of the key components of this project is software development.
Its market in Egypt is growing at a rate of 32% per year, the second highest in the world.
With greater enforcement of intellectual
property rights, Egypt's electronics and information technology is rapidly growing.
Established in the 1980s, by 1996 the industry had more than 400 firms in electronics
production and another 500 companies producing information technology products and
services. *1
Egypt is the largest market for
information technology suppliers in the Middle East. It dominates the regional market.
Computer giants such as Oracle and Microsoft are heavily recruiting Arabic software
programmers from Egypt. Egyptians perform more than 80% of s6ftware development in the
Middle East. Information technology with Egypt’s large base of trained and skillful technical personnel is set to
be a catalytic industry as the country is a leading center for Arabic language with a
significant publishing literary works and producing cultural by-products.
Lately, the International
Telecommunications Union (ITIJ) and the Egyptian Government have agreed to hold the
International Telecommunication Exhibition and Forum in Cairo next year. The event will be
the first ever ITU sponsored telecom event for the Middle East and Arab countries.
Egypt is gradually becoming the hub of
Arabic software in the world.
Tourism
Egypt has various impressive assets in tourism. It is a
tremendous attraction as a cultural tourism destination, 2700-KM coastline, and its
significantly mild weather at 9 months of the year. *2
In addition Egypt enjoys various advantages such as:
- Being a center for international sports tournaments,
conferences and exhibitions, film and music festivals,
- Being a major financial center in the Middle East attracting
significant numbers of business travelers,
- Host of headquarters of several regional organizations.
*1 Electronics alone contributes 6%
to the. industrial production and nearly 2% to GDP.
In 1997, 200 large and medium-sized companies were established in the electronics sector.
*2 Although the Middle East accounted for only 2% of international
tourism, the region has witnessed the fastest rate of increase in arrivals since 1990, led
by Egypt which now accounts for more than one third of tourism flows to the region.
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