Current investment of auto industry reaches $3B: Min. Kabil

CAIRO – 15 May 2018: Current investment in the auto industry is at about $3 billion, of which $1.6 billion is in the automotive industry and $1.4 billion is in the feeder industries, Minister of Trade and Industry Tarek Kabil said.

This came during his speech at the celebration for the expanded partnership between the Arab Organization for Industrialization and Fiat Chrysler for 10 years, ending in 2027, in the presence of Minister of Investment Sahar Nasr and Arab Organization for Industrialization Chairman Abdel Aziz Saif el-Din.

They also inaugurated the newest dealership and service center for Jeep Cherokee cars, which works with solar energy to have an annual production of 6,000 cars.

Kabil added that there are about 86,000 workers that work in the auto industry and feeder industries.

The minister said that his ministry is currently working on a number of sector-based strategies, clarifying that a strategy to develop the engineering sector, including the car industry and its feeders industries.

He further 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, as well as 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, and the exports of the automotive sector and the feeder industries amounted to $700 million in 2017, Kabil said.

He noted that the Egyptian market has witnessed positive movements recently, including importing used electric cars on condition that they are no more than three years old and the decree stating that locally manufactured components of vehicles should not be less than 46 percent.

In March, KIA Motors and Egyptian International Trading & Agencies signed a contract to assemble KIA Cars in Egypt with an investment of LE 4.24 million during the upcoming five years, which was followed by the announcing of various car makers as Renault, Fiat and Volkswagen their studies to assemble their cars in Egypt.

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

As a part of the Egyptian-European partnership, customs tariffs on European cars were scheduled to be lowered gradually by 10 percent per year until Egypt becomes fully exempted from these customs.