Egypt is the third largest economy in Africa, and is expected to grow in the coming decade or two. Currently, Egypt’s economy relies mainly on agriculture, media, petroleum, natural gas, and tourism; with other major industries being textiles, food processing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, hydrocarbons, construction, cement, metals, light manufactures, and services.
Within these industries, there are those that are showing future prospects of brightness and profitability for Egypt. The growth industries are expected to play a big role in Egypt’s future economic outlook. They are also known as the strategic, catalytic and transformational industries.
The Egyptian Government launched Development Policies in the 2000s that aimed at stimulating the economy’s productivity. The future path for the Egyptian industrial sector was to become the engine of growth, employment creation, and export development with the objective of deepening Egypt’s integration into the global economy as a competitive player. By the year 2025, Egypt will be a leading industrializing nation in the MENA region in terms of industrial performance as well as a main export hub for medium-technology manufactured products. This was achieved by the current successes in various sectors, and is continuously in review to ensure development and sustainability.
The growth industries in Egypt are classified under five major sub-sectors; energy, minerals and metals, textiles, services and communications. These sub-sectors of growth industries are expected to contribute on average 0.75% or 5.8% of annual GDP growth over the next 10 years – which is about 2.7% per year – with more rapid growth between 2015 and 2019 due to economic reform policies spearheaded by the government of Prime Minister Sherif Ismail and President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s administration.
Egypt is home to sixty of the Forbes 500 of Middle East. The highest-ranked Egyptian company was Commercial International Bank (CIB), Egypt’s largest private-sector lender and largest listed corporation, which came in 49th with a market value of $4.8 billion, revenues of $1.3 billion, net-profit of $437.2 million and total assets of $16.4 billion.
Egypt is also home to two of Africa’s largest companies by market capitalization: Orascom Telecom Holding and mobile phone service provider Vodafone Essar.
According to the World Bank, Egypt has much potential in the Energy sector. Egypt has excellent solar resources with electricity generating potential estimated at 73,656 terawatt-hours (TWh), while wind capacity is also quite good with an estimate of 7,200 MW commercially available in the Gulf of Suez Area.
Egypt intends to increase the supply of electricity generated from renewable sources to 20% by 2022 and 42% by 2035, with wind providing 14 percent, hydro power 2 percent, and solar 25 percent by 2035. The private sector is expected to deliver most of this capacity.
Arabian Business reported that, with “wind currently providing 14 percent, solar 25 percent and hydro power 2 percent respectively (of the total renewable energy output), all will help reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuel while decreasing the impact of climate change,” Saad Ayman, the managing director for Siemens Gamesa in Egypt, told Arabian.
Egypt is yet to fully tap into its Coal reserves. Egypt holds 18 million tons (MMst) of proven coal reserves as of 2016, ranking 68th in the world and accounting for about 0% of the world’s total coal reserves of 1,139,471 million tons (MMst). Egypt has proven reserves equivalent to 22.9 times its annual consumption.
Egypt is rich by mineral resources which economically -quality raw materials that reach back over one of seventy minerals, including gold, iron, phosphate and ilmenite and white sand, black sand, gypsum, kaolin and ornamental stones, coal, manganese, sulphur, niobium, tantalum and other large economic raw materials
Egypt has substantial mineral resources, including 48 million tons of tantalite (fourth largest in the world), 50 million tons of coal, and an estimated 6.7 million ounces of gold in the Eastern Desert.
As well as Lapis Lazuli and Turquoise, the Ancient Egyptians also used many more ‘common’ stones across not only their jewellery pieces, but also powdered down as medicinal remedies. These included Amethyst, Chalcedony, Feldspar, Garnet, Jasper, Obsidian, Olivine and Quartz.
Globally, the demand for textile will rise by manifold, as the global population will touch the 8.1 billion marks by 2025. By the mid-century, this figure would reach 9.5 billion, making to a staggering 11 billion by 2100. Following this, the global apparel market will grow to US $ 2.1 trillion by 2025.
In Egypt, major industrial products included textiles, chemicals (including fertilizers, polymers, and petrochemicals), pharmaceuticals, food processing, petroleum, construction, cement, metals, and light consumer goods. The clothing and textiles sector is the largest industrial employer.
Textile and Apparel is an important sector in Egypt. The objective of the 2020 sector strategy is to sustain export growth at 15% (CAGR) to increase from the current level 2.6 billion USD to 10 billion USD in 2020. Major production includes Premium fabric, cotton producers, Spinning and weaving producers.
The main exports of the nation, as of 2017, include:
Egypt and China signed a trade agreement in 2001. China is Egypt’s largest trading partner. It also has an established industrial policy, investing $70 billion in Egypt from 2008 to 2011, with its military bases there included. Citic, the second-largest state-owned corporation in China and among the world’s largest industrial corporations also invested $74 million in Egypt’s cement industry ($62 million of that went directly into joint venture), and $23 million in telecom company Orascom Telecom Holding SAE ($21 million went directly to its Egyptian subsidiary).
In 2010, Suez Canal revenues increased to USD 5 billion as compared to USD 3.6 billion in 2009. Whereas, in 2012, the waterway recorded a revenue of USD 5.3 billion and handled a record 17.23 million TEUs during the fiscal year which ended on June 30, 2012 up from 16.77 million TEUs in 2011 (a rise of 1.2% over the previous year). The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) projects that 18 million containers will cross the canal by the end of 2013, with revenues reaching $5.8 billion (USD), compared with $5 billion last fiscal year (FY), generating an estimated 3% economic growth rate in Egypt during 2013-2014 period.
The most vibrant sector in Egypt has got to be Construction.
The Construction industry in Egypt comprises residential construction (house construction, multi-unit apartment and townhouse construction), non-residential construction (commercial and industrial building construction and institutional building construction), engineering construction (heavy industry and other non-building construction.
The sector has been growing at 4% every year in Egypt since 2007-2008.
The growth of the commercial and residential segment of this sector is mainly driven by the public spending on infrastructure development which accounts for about 50% of the total construction expenditure in Egypt.
Egypt’s exports to China increased to USD 3 billion, in 2009, then increasing continuously to $4 billion (USD) in 2011, driven by a record increase in Chinese export orders for the Suez Canal Corridor.
Cairo, the Capital city of Egypt, is undergoing massive development, including the construction of a new city.
Officially, a major reason for the undertaking of the project was to relieve congestion in Cairo, which is already one of the world’s most crowded cities, with the population of Greater Cairo expected to double in the next few decades. Cairo, for comparison, has a population of nearly 20 million.
Construction continues in the business district of Egypt’s new capital city, known as New Administrative Capital, 28 miles east of Cairo, March 8, 2021. The finished city is expected to eventually house at least 6 million residents.
Sources: Privacy Shield, World Bank, Arabian Business
