Opinion: Open for Business?

The economic slide that followed the 2011 revolution, sparked a need for investments in the country to prevent the economic crunch that Egypt seems pre-ordained to have, which will further crush the already crushed under-class. The problem, as our economic experts and government ministers have been framing it, is our lack of direct foreign investment: if only Egypt had more FDI, everything would be great.

A different view was recently offered by the manager of a USD 1 billion fund that aims to invest in Egypt. The manager has the money, but suffers from a unique dilemma: he can’t find large-scale projects to invest in. It is easy to find projects that require USD 1 million or even USD 10 million investments; but what Egypt needs is a whole bunch of projects worth USD 100 million each for real impact to be achieved and felt. Those projects strangely enough, are not available, for the following reasons:

Energy: Egypt is currently suffering from an energy crisis, with blackout plaguing all the major cities in the winter, leaving people dreading the amount of blackouts they will endure in the summer. The current gas shortage has contributed so heavily to the crisis that the cement sector in Egypt is looking into coal as an energy alternative. This naturally rules out many industrial investments.