Egypt left behind
The GCC countries are forming a single market by 2007, removing all trade barriers, creating a common market with a unified trade policy. We- who should be doing that and wanting to join them- won't be seeing anything closely similar anytime soon, because the government loves our tarriff and custom duties money, and it would require them to get rid of all of their senseless and bureaucratic laws that make investers run-away from actually seriously investing in Egypt. We, who were leading this region at some point, are going to end up trailing everybody else. Fantastic!
posted by The Sandmonkey @ 12/20/2005 03:02:00 AM
4 Comments:
Going to?? err..i think you are misinformed, egypt is not going to trail them, but correct phrase is, egypt IS ALREADY trailing.
Simple plain examples:
Saudi Arabia exports wheat, egypt imports wheat & fish albeit the presence of 2 seas & the NIle.
Lebanon's Design artists/singers/entrepreneurs are fast becoming the IT & are leading a break through internationaly in the haute couture business.
Dubai (UAE) is soon to go head to head with Hong Kong as a serious trade spot & investment,i wont mention their increasing tourism is surpassing egypt or how fast their economy is growing not depending on oil wealth for those who would mention it,or their media city!
Bahrain & Qatar are slowly taking their place behind Dubai, Bahrain has an excellent state of the art formula one racing track. i dont want to go further into Oman or Kuwait, but if the GCC does bring down their customs barriers, woe to the country here, the word trailing, sandmonkey,would be an understatement.
I cannot claim what i said in numbers & statistics, but do we really need them to see how the arab gulf countries are in progress & have surpassed egypt!
I need more info SM. Seriously, this is the main reason I read your blog. The inside info I cant get online. And this is the most important subject to me so anything more you can get me....
True, SA export wheat, but do you know how much subsidies they have to put in this industry? This is not real liberalism.
I read in a recent article (I think it was a review of Eela3 seafood restaurant in Alex in the Ahram Weekly months back, but I may be mistaken) that Egypt does import some types of fish but it exports others. Also about the wheat issue, there's was a chapter written by Tim Mitchell (economic historian and Middle East political economy guy at NYU) in an old book of his about Egypt's wheat situation vis-a-vis the US. I think the essay's also in his recent book, Rule of Experts. Anyway, he mentions that a lot of farmland is used for growing clover (barseem) to feed livestock which is increasing in demand and more lucrative than wheat. He also says that Egypt makes up for this by importing wheat from the US, the production of which happens to be subsidised there as well, apparently. Also i'm not sure how we pay for that wheat (loan or USAID grant) but it's a major component of US-Egypt economic relations. I should go find that article again.
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