Egypt targets to attract LE40B in investments after issuance of 'State Ownership Document'

CAIRO – 15 June 2022: Consultant to the Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Gihane Saleh stated Wednesday in a phone-in that the government targets to attract LE40-billion worth of investments over four years, which she believes would be easier after the soon issuance of "State Ownership Document."

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli stated Monday that the "State Ownership Document," which will be launched soon, consists of eight areas, and is composed of just 20 pages. 

Madbouli added that the government came up with the document by checking the experience of other 30 countries that issued similar ones. He clarified that the document was drafted over seven months to make sure it would fulfill the purpose of raising the share of the private sector in public investments from 30 percent to 65 percent.

The prime minister noted – during the dialogue he held with representatives of the private sector - that the ultimate goal is recording an annual GDP growth of seven percent, pointing out that currently 50 percent of the GDP is income generated by state-owned assets.

A draft of the State Ownership Document had been distributed among a number of business associations, indicating the plan about the status of the government as a producer of goods and services in the Egyptian economy.

The government plans to completely withdraw from 79 sectors within three years and reduce its investments in 45 others. Yet, it will pump more investments, without exclusion of the private sector, in 27 sectors.

Some of the sectors in the first category are fisheries, livestock, constructions, certain social housing projects, TV and film production, retail, automotives, home appliances, furniture, leather, fertilizers, and glass. 

Sectors in the second category include cement, steel, aluminum, meat, pourtly, animal feed, dairy, cigarettes, tobacco, power plants, electricity distribution networks, and wastewater treatment plants among others.

As for the third category, the sectors are mainly, but not only, infrastructure, education, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, wholesale, water treatment, water supply networks, sidewalks, maritime transport, railways, metro, air transport, shipbuilding, landline services, wireless communications, TV and radio broadcast, semiconductors production, newspapers, and news websites.

What's more, there are 18 sectors of interest for plans of public-private partnerships. Those consist of digital transformation, and the fourth industrial revolution relevant to artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), 3D printing, smart transportation systems, self-driving cars, cybersecurity, as well as food and water security.

The other sectors are smart agriculture and irrigation systems, energy, energy storage and export, academia, cloud computing security, 5G and 6G technologies, logistics, smart supply chains, modern financial technologies, blockchain, genomic medicine, smart healthcare systems, bioengineering, nanotechnology, smart cities, and smart defense systems.