Korean industrial zone to be established in Marsa Matrouh: Source

CAIRO – 13 January 2018: A number of Korean businessmen and investors have negotiated last week with the governor of Marsa Matrouh governorate the establishment of an industrial zone in Matrouh that will span on two million feddans, an official source said Saturday.

He said that the zone will include a number of industries, the types of which have not yet been identified by the Korean side.

He added that the Korean side could take more than six months to finish the project’s feasibility studies and decide on the value of investments that it intends to pump into the project.

The zone, according to the source, will include 90-100 factories of different industries, the output of which will be exported.

The source said that construction works would begin by the fourth quarter of 2018 after providing the zone with the needed infrastructure.

He added that Matrouh governorate has communicated with Egypt’s Industrial Development Authority (IDA) to start providing the area with the needed infrastructure so that it can be allocated to the Korean investors.

In light of the Korean side’s keenness to conclude negotiations within six months, governor of Matrouh, Alaa Abou-Zeid, has requested a delegation from the Trade Industry to visit the area to determine what it needs from infrastructure and the time needed to provide it

Accordingly, a delegation from the ministry has visited the area and delegated the IDA to conduct studies on the cost and time needed to set up infrastructure in the area. A source at the Trade Ministry said that these studies would be completed by next April.

Koran investments in Egypt stand at $500 million, focused in the fields of electronics and textiles.

Egyptian-Korean relations have been improving recently, after President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi’s visit to Seoul in 2016, in which he signed nine agreements and memos with South Korean President Park Chung-hee in various fields.

The deals included railway security system upgrades, the establishment of a joint technological university, developments at the Alexandria seaport, in addition to memoranda of understanding (MoUs) between the ministries of education, higher education, justice and trade from both countries.

Another MoU was signed between Egypt and the Korean export and import bank to facilitate $3 billion loans to Egypt.