What next for Egypt's economy? | WPN World People News

“How do you want Egypt’s economy to change in the coming years? Where should the priorities lie in the short and medium term? Where should investments be made? What can Egypt learn from the experiences of central and eastern Europe after the collapse of communism two decades ago? What can those countries learn from Egypt?”

These and many other questions are being asked by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and its partners during a day of discussion in Cairo. The event, on Monday 24 October, is one of several listening exercises that the Bank is holding in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region. The Bank wants Egyptians to give their input, as it draws up its plans for operations in the country. EBRD Director of Communications, Jonathan Charles, says: “It’s very important that we listen to what Egyptians want for the future of their economy, we have a good track record of project-based activities, working effectively on the ground.”

The Cairo event, organised in cooperation with The Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI), The Egyptian Junior Business Association (EJB) and sponsored by The Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MOPIC), is an opportunity for Egyptians to share their opinions and experiences with their counterparts in central and eastern Europe and Turkey. The Transition-to-Transition (T2T) Initiative is a framework within which the EBRD can facilitate and exploit a "peer-to-peer" exchange of transition and reform experience between the Bank's current countries of operations and countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean region. The Bank's role will be that of a facilitator, bringing old and new "peers" of reforms together, and a listener in order to better understand the differences between the reform experiences in the two regions.

The hope is that by swapping ideas at the Transition to Transition (T2T) Initiative everyone will be enriched and the debate will provoke ideas for going forward. As the EBRD’s Chief Economist Erik Berglof puts it: “Transition in central and eastern Europe, as well as in the southern and eastern Mediterranean spans a wide range of experience. With this event, the EBRD wants to foster and facilitate peer-to-peer exchange of these experiences, in individual sectors, as well as for the economy as a whole.”

The EBRD has been tasked by the international community with helping Egypt and other emerging democracies in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region. It estimates it will have the capacity to invest as much as one billion euros a year in Egypt and two and a half billion euros a year across the region. The EBRD was set up in 1991, in response to the collapse of communism, and has more than twenty years of experience in fostering market economies. In Egypt, among the Bank’s priorities will be the financing and improving of conditions for investments in the private sector, with particular emphasis on developing small and medium sized enterprises as prime drivers of growth and job creation.

Source: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development