Al Akhbar, p.14, (14/4/2008)

Rashid and 40 Egyptian senior businessmen aim at boosting trade and joint ventures

By: Mohammad Al Hawari

From New Delhi

Within the framework of the diversification of Egyptian sources of investments and boosting ties with major economic powers, Engineer Rashid Mohammad Rashid starts a visit to India on top of a large delegation comprising businessmen from different sectors including garment, textiles, banking, vehicles, engineering industries, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, leather, furniture, and ship building.

This is the biggest Egyptian delegation to visit India and it will address several files during such visit. It will hold meetings with senior Indian officials in New Delhi and Mumbai. Engineer Rashid will meet the Indian Prime Minister and Ministers of Trade, Industry, Textiles, and SMEs.

New markets for Egyptian exports

The visit aims at reaching mechanisms for following up and settling problems facing the trade exchange between the two countries, holding regular meetings for discussing all issues that face the economic, trade and investment ties, increasing the volume of trade, and opening new markets for the Egyptian exports. One of the important issues, which will be discussed by Rashid is singing an MOU in the field of commercial, Technical and Industrial cooperation and establishing and Indian industrial zone in Egypt in addition to boosting training in the technical field and coordinating stances of both countries in the WTO and G20 negotiations.

Solving the Egyptian industrial problems

One of the important issues to be discussed is singing an MOU by the Egyptian Industrial Modernization Center with India to provide Egypt with Indian experts to enable the center to implement its objectives and provide the Egyptian companies with world-class experts who are capable of modernizing the Egyptian industries and making them competitive on the global level.  The MOU also includes providing the Egyptian side with experts in the fields of agriculture, food processing, textiles, leather, furniture, shipping, engineering industries, IT, services, and project management. During the visit, the Indian investments in Egypt will be discussed in view of the desire of several Indian companies to move a part of their operations to Egypt with the aim of opening new markets in the EU and Arab countries.

Mamdouh Mostafa, Chairman of the Commercial Representation Agency, states that the visit aims at making use of the Indian expertise in the field of capacity building, increasing cooperation in the industrial fields and IT applications as well as training labor and technical cadres in the textile and garments fields. He noted that the volume of trade exchange between the two countries has reached $ 1 billion and 282 million. Egypt   exports to India oil, natural gas, raw cotton, steel products, iron, coal, phosphate, metals, leather, marble, ceramics, paper products, textiles, seeds, ships, and carpets. Egyptian imports from Indian include the following: cotton yarn, fabrics, tires, press paper, auto spare parts, diesel engines, frozen meat and cotton textiles.

The Indian investments in Egypt reached $ 800 million in the fields of spinning and weaving, petrochemicals, food processing, tourism, pharmaceuticals, services and technical cooperation in the fields of oil, gas, chemicals, fertilizers, mining, textiles, pumps, agricultural equipment, computer softwares, SMEs, energy and construction.

Low interest rates loans

The timing of the visit is very significant as it comes after holding the Indian-African summit. The program of the Indian government in dealing with African markets includes a mechanism for providing lines of credits by the EXIM bank at low interest rates. The Indian companies will perform the infrastructure projects through those lines of credit. Egypt could benefit from this program in the infrastructure projects to be financed by the African countries. The delegation will also address issues related to importing basic food items such as rice, frozen and boneless buffalo meat which are considered strategic items for the Egyptian market.

Egyptian Indian relations are organized by several agreements including the trade agreement signed in 1977, establishing the joint commission in 1983, the agreement of encouraging and protecting bilateral investments signed in1997 and the agreement of avoidance of double taxation, which was renewed in 2006.

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