Political funding is scandalous

Faiza Abu El-Naga Cairo - Akram Ali   Egypt's Minister of International Cooperation and Planning, Faiza Abu El-Naga, said that foreign funding to Egyptian political groups is a ‘Great Scandal’, especially for presidential candidates, stressing that the funding has its targets and affected the Egyptian national security. Abu El-Naga told  ‘Arabstoday’ that she was the first one who called for forming a fact finding committee in foreign funding of NGOs (Non-governmental Organizations). She added that the ministry of international cooperation made a report about the foreign funding of the Egyptian political groups and handed it to the Ministry of Justice, which will reveal its details soon. She also revealed that the government will issue a report about the non-registered NGOs which received foreign funding, and about the INGOs (International Non-governmental Organizations) which are working in Egypt without getting a license from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stressing that this kind of funding is totally unacceptable, especially when it’s related to the political groups or presidential candidates. Abu El-Naga also spoke about the main challenges that face achieving high growth rate of the Egyptian economy, saying “the rate of economic growth during the year 2010 - 2011 was decreased to 1.8%, compared with the expectations, due to several reasons, such as the factional protests, in addition to some external reasons, such as the revolutions in the Arab world, along with our major challenge which is the Nile Basin countries problems. About the agreements that were signed recently with the EU, Abu El-Naga said that the cooperation with the EU is very important, as Egypt gets non-refundable grants from the EU. The most recent program with the EU was about granting Egypt 446 million euro, from 2011 to 2013. She pointed out that, this program, unlike borrowing, doesn’t burden the state budget, assuring that the Egyptian government decided not to borrow from the countries that imposed lending requirements, and limit borrowing for the profitable projects. Abu El-Naga said that this EU program, which is divided to three phases, will fund industrial and educational projects, as well as the development of informally built-areas projects. The minister revealed that the second phase of Mine-Sweeping project in Al-Alemen will start during the coming weeks, which will be carried out by the armed forces, with cooperation of some countries such as US.   Abu El-Naga concluded her interview confirming that Egypt received only $ 1 billion of the Arab states from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in addition to some in-kind assistance for the parliamentary elections from Japan and South Korea