Trade minister probes drawing on Singapore's industrial expertise

Minister of Trade and Industry Tareq Qabil on Saturday conferred with officials of Surbana Jurong Company, one of Singapore’s leading companies in the building and construction sector, on possibility of conducting feasibility studies on establishing integrated industrial cities in Egypt as part of the ministry's plan to provide 60 million cubic meters of industrial districts by 2020.

In a statement released on Saturday, the ministry said the meeting comes in implementation of the outcome reached during a summit meeting between President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and his Singaporean counterpart Tony Tan during his recent visit to Egypt

Qabil asserted that the ministry has outlined a vision for industrial development which aims at achieving an eight percent growth in the industrial sector by 2020, in addition to luring industrial investments to reach EGP 100 billion up from its current value of EGP 45 billion.

He made it clear that the ministry's strategy in this regard focused on two pillars; the first is to establish industrial complexes for the small- and medium-scale industries such as the leather city in Rubeiki, the textiles city in Upper Egypt and the Furniture City in Damietta. The second pillar is to increase the number of industrial districts and activities to reach 10 million cubic meters by the end of the current year.

The minister asked the Singaporean company officials to prepare an outline on establishing integrated industrial cities including an overall financial cost and based on partnership between the private and public sectors.