Egypt displays partnership with Mahindra Group in car industry

CAIRO – 15 March 2018: Egyptian Minister of Public Enterprise Khaled Badwi discussed the cooperation and partnership opportunities in the Car industry field with a delegation from the Indian Mahindra Group, an official statement pointed out Thursday.

The statement said that the ministry intends to develop all its companies to increase productivity, improve quality and competitiveness through the partnerships with private companies.

The Indian delegation displayed their activities in the Middle East and Africa; stating the factories it established in other countries such as Turkey and Algeria, and the investment priorities of the company in Egypt for the production of agricultural tractors and generators.

Badwi called on the Indian group to finish the development studies and to visit the production lines of the ministry’s companies that work on producing all kinds of vehicles and the car feeder industry to be able to create a framework for the partnership between the two parties.

Mahindra Group works on 20 industrial sectors, including car industry, agricultural tractors, Steel, real estate, financial services and information technology with an investment of $19 billion in about 100 countries.

Egypt witnesses movements in the car market as a delegation from the French multinational group Renault is conducting field trips to a number of local car assembly lines, with the Egyptian International Motors Company (EIM), their agents in Egypt to assemble some of their models in Egypt.

Kia Motors’ announced on Monday signing contracts with its local agents to assemble KIA Cars in Egypt with an investment of LE 4.24 million during the upcoming five years.

Minister of Trade Tarek Kabil said Monday that the current investment in the auto industry is about $3 billion, of which $1.6 billion is in the automotive industry and $1.4 billion is in the feeder industries.

There are about 86,000 workers that work in the auto and feeder industries, Kabil noted.

The minister added that the car industry in Egypt has about 170 companies, including 19 companies that manufacture and assemble cars of all kinds, which include passenger cars, buses, micro and minibuses and transport vehicles, and more than 150 companies engaged in the manufacture of a number of components of cars.

Local Market volume reached 100,000 cars in 2017, 50 percent of which are locally produced, he said.

The minister added that the exports of the automotive sector and the feeder industries amounted to $700 million in 2017.

Meanwhile, Egypt postponed applying the decline of customs on European Union assembled cars to zero till 2020.