Wheat from Kazakhstan
A new strategy of diversifying the sources of food imported by Egypt is now being adopted by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, to confront price increases on international markets and to insure attaining a strategic reserve of essential foodstuffs in Egypt. Minister of trade Rasheed M. Rasheed said Egypt will import one million tons of wheat from Kazakhstan in 2008, with the first shipment arriving in February. Contacts are underway with Kazakhstan, he said, to import red meat at preferential prices. On the other hand, he said, Egypt’s exports to Kazakhstan have increased five times.
ENPPI wins
The Egyptian oil company ENPPI (Engineering for the Petroleum and Process Industries) has won a $1.4 billion contract for three projects to prospect for natural gas in Venezuela. The projects will take 24 months to complete, Oil Minister Sameh Fahmi said. Fahmi added that this comes as part of the oil sector”s strategy to expand activity of Egyptian oil companies outside Egypt. “ENPPI, Petrojet, the Egyptian Drilling Company and the Egyptian Petroleum Marine Services Company have won international bids to the tune of $1.7 billion in 11 countries including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, Syria, Algeria, Qatar, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, and Venezuela.”
Trade up
The volume of trade exchange between Egypt and the United States rose to $5.7 billion during the first nine months of 2007, up from $4.7 billion during the same period in 2006, registering an increase of 21.2 per cent. The figures were cited in a recent report by the Trade Representative Bureau in Washington, which also placed Egypt”s exports at $1.9 billion during the same period with an increase of 5.4 per cent over the previous year. Oil constituted 49 per cent of the exports, the report declared, and non-oil exports 51 per cent.
PPP projects
The World Bank (WB) has granted Cairo $600,000 for the less-than-two-year old Public Private Partnership (PPP) department of the Ministry of Finance. Senior WB economist Paul Noumba praised efforts by Egypt to draft the PPP bill, soon to be referred to Parliament for ratification. He said the World Bank is willing to offer necessary technical and legal assistance in this domain. Established in June 2006, the PPP central unit has projects of over four billion dollars for the five years to come, he said.
From New York to Switzerland
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced that the Egyptian exhibition of ancient artifacts in New York will move to Switzerland next April where it will run for four months. Hosni said the exhibition is expected to bring Egypt some 700,000 Euros. Switzerland will cover the exhibition fees including insurance, which is expected to cost some $7 million to cover destruction, natural disasters, terror operations and theft, and transfer it back to Cairo.
Japanese finds
And after 40 years of archaeological excavations in Egypt, Japan’s University of Wasida is now displaying in Japan the antiquities its expeditions unearthed. The exhibition is touring Miyazaki Museum, Sapporo’s Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, and later Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art. Some 317 items dating back to different eras are on exhibit.
Egyptian in South Africa
The Culture Ministry is preparing to stage an Egyptian culture week in Pretoria next month. This comes within the framework of culture and arts exchange between Egypt and South Africa and will include Egyptian folklore performances, the screening of films and documentaries, as well as the organisation of symposia on the history and culture of ancient Egypt
Maria ready for visitors
The Byzantine-era Mediterranean site of Maria, 45km west of Alexandria, will soon be ready to receive visitors, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced. A 10-year, LE20 million project using state-of-the-art techniques to prepare the site as a tourist destination has been completed. The Maria area boasts an important collection of Byzantine antiquities and sites including a Roman port, a factory producing the wine for which Maria was famous, and a Byzantine house with an open courtyard surrounded by a number of rooms.