Egypt's planning ministry announces 4 programs to boost transformative industries

CAIRO – 4 November 2022: The Ministry of Planning and Economic Development released Friday a report on the allocations and targets in the sector of transformative industries for FY2022/2023, announcing four programs aimed at boosting production and exports.

The report began with displaying facts on those industries in the Egyptian economy, so as they compose 16 percent of the country's GDP, and secure employment to 15 percent of the workforce.

Most importantly, transformative industries constitute 85 percent of Egypt's non-petroleum exports, which makes them a major source of foreign currencies along with expats' remittances, which come on top.

The ministry estimates that industrial production, including petroleum refining, will rise from LE2,984.7 billion to LE3,405.3 billion with a growth of 14.1 percent. The government itself targets to invest LE93.5 billion in the sector in the current fiscal year, up from LE74.1 billion in the past one, with an increase of 6.1 percent.

Of those allocations, 80 percent (LE74.1 billion) would be directed to the non-petroleum transformative industries, while the rest (LE19.4) would go the petroleum ones.  

The funds will be invested in four programs. One is about encouraging industrial investments and deepening local manufacturing by enhancing the business ecosystem. That is through digitalization; facilitation of the issuance of different industrial licenses; establishment of industrial cities whose production would be targeted at import replacement; improvement of the efficiency of existing industrial cities in Upper Egypt; promoting green transition in the sector; and modernizing the infrastructure of labor-intensive industrial cities such as Al Mahalla Al Kubra, Kafr Al Dawar, and Morgham.

The second program is concerned with enhancing the quality of industrial products by upgrading the standards required, quality tests, and qualifying industrial establishments to acquire different quality certification.

The third program focuses on export development, by setting policies that would better serve exporters, eliminating obstacles facing Egyptian exports in foreign markets, improving control on imports and exports, and targeting markets that offer promising export opportunities.

The last program is on honing the skills of workers in the industrial sector through a number of local establishments that are the Production Sufficiency Authority, offering vocational training in a number of essential industrial sectors, as well as Tebin Vocational Training Center, which is specialized in mining and engineering industries. That is in addition to partnerships with local and international entities.