WATANI International
10 October 2010
No selling public sector
There is no intention to put public business sector companies up for sale, Minister of Trade and Industry Rasheed Mohamed Rasheed recently said. Rasheed, who is also the acting minister of investment, said privatisation was not a political process but an economic one in the first place. Egypt faces enormous challenges in the fields of education, infrastructure, energy and services, he said, adding that the government will work to push the GDP to 8 or 9 per cent.
EU Twinning
The Final Event Ceremony of the EU funded Railway Institutional Twinning Project between Egypt and France was recently held in Cairo. The 1.5 million-Euro twinning project between the Ministries of Transport in Egypt and France aimed to benefit from French expertise in the field of reforming railway safety based on EU directives and best practices in France and other European countries in this area.
The project covered, among other aspects, the reform of railway safety rules in Egypt; establishing an independent accident investigating body within the Ministry of Transport, a safety management system, and an accident database. A total of 40 French, Finnish, Lithuanian and Estonian experts provided some 800 working days and produced 50 benchmark reports covering all aspects of the Twinning Project. Three study tours to France, Lithuania, Finland and Estonia were organised, and numerous seminars and workshops were held to train the Egyptian counterparts.
This twinning project is one of 20 other twinning projects implemented in the framework of the Support to the Association Agreement Programme (SAAP), an EU funded programme under the Egyptian Ministry of International Cooperation. With a budget of 97 million Euros during the period 2005-2010, the SAAP aims at supporting the Egyptian administration in developing capacity in three core areas: trade and economic liberalisation; improvement and subsequent enforcement of legislative and regulatory frameworks, and institutional reform.
Italian nursing
Recent talks between International Cooperation Minister Fayza Abul-Naga and visiting Italian diplomat Elisabetta Belloni followed up on the implementation of joint development projects carried out under the 2007 debt swap programme between Egypt and Italy. Under the programme, Rome gives up USD100 million of Cairo’s outstanding debt to implement development projects in Egypt. Accordingly, Italy contributed to 53 development projects worth USD150 million.
The meeting also tackled a project to establish an Egyptian-Italian nursing institute in Port Said. Rome will be offering technical support for the project, setting curricula and providing necessary equipment. A suggestion for a joint university for technology, to be built by the private and public sectors in Egypt and Italy, was discussed. An Egyptian Italian summit will be held in February 2011.
Japan helps Mother and Child
Under its Assistance Scheme for Grassroots and Human Security Projects, the government of Japan has granted USD 43,272 to the Coptic Hope Association’s San Moris Centre in Beni Mazar in Minya, Upper Egypt. The grant is to be used for the purchase of medical equipment for the association’s mother and child care clinic. The association also cares for persons with disability special needs. The Japanese assistance scheme was launched in Egypt in 1994; so far 128 projects totalling over USD5 million have been implemented. Attending the handover ceremony in Beni Mazar were Japan’s ambassador to Cairo Norihiko Okuda, Minya governor Ahmed Diaa’ Eddin, and Albert Youssef Sadeq, chairman of the Coptic Hope Association.