US Companies Truck in Investments.

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Hafiz
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US Companies Truck in Investments.

Post by Hafiz »

US Companies Truck in Investments.

“Egypt's Minister of Investment Sahar Nasr had a meeting on Tuesday with a delegation representing 40 US companies investing in Egypt that the government is actively working on encouraging investments of the private sector.” http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... ves-o.aspx

Not really. In July and on other occasions she has traveled to the US and other places to meet with business leaders (names never mentioned) in large groups to stimulate investment in Egypt.

Three other Ministers – agriculture, finance and electricity attended this grand event.

This is a Minister who lies in /inflates her CV on an easily checkable basis and doesn’t mention the name of a single US company that sent some filing clerks to meet with her on this grand occasion. If there was any human or company important she would have mentioned them. Its therefore likely that the attendees were underwhelming as will be their investment.

Thomas H. Goldberger Chargé d'Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo attended. He has had an undistinguished career and has been filling the hole of a vacant Ambassadorial post for well over one year. It is not impossible that Trump and the Congress will find an Ambassador – but not soon.

The US Egyptian Embassy Facebook makes no mention of this event but mentions lots of big and small things. https://www.facebook.com/USEmbassyCairo/

The Embassy website lists the current US military exercises with Egypt, a film festival at Gouna and a small grant they made to fix the huge problem of water in Egypt. No mention of the Captains of Industry meeting that their boss allegedly attended with 4 Ministers. https://eg.usembassy.gov/

No newspaper outside Egypt and no trade or industry journal mention it.

I wonder whether it actually happened – there was no photo of the group, the businessmen shaking the Minister’s hand etc. Given her problems with truth maybe she ‘imagined’ it.

The Local American Chamber of Commerce was allegedly there and the best that can be said of them is that some are still there, they are an undistinguished group with few ideas and they smell no less fragrant than the general business environment. Their Board is dominated by locals and generally 4th rate and local firms. Oh, 1 woman on a 14 member board. God knows what they do other than satisfy themselves but they have a huge staff for that.

The pattern of current US investment stocks, not flows is bizarre. Most is in oil and gas with few jobs, large western workforces and repatriation of profits. In this industry its episodic investment, medium amounts on exploration over long periods, huge short bursts to develop the field then little investment after that. They are fantastic on one thing – transfer pricing to declare their profits in low tax countries. The shock is that once the resource runs out there is nothing.

The Chamber gets confused about basic concepts of stocks and flows and you make of this what you can.

“service sectors—including commercial services, consultancies, health and education—contributed 17.0% of (total?) capital, while those in the field of construction contributed 3.9%. Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft all operate in the telecommunication and information technology sector, which accounted for 1.7% of U.S. capital in Egypt, while the Egyptian fast-food market is dominated by U.S.-based franchises including Baskin-Robbins, Burger King, Chili’s, Cinnabon, Cold Stone Creamery, Dairy Queen, T.G.I. Friday’s, Hardee’s, Hard Rock Café, KFC, Little Caesars, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Ruby Tuesday”

Maybe there is some US capital in jobs rich manufacturing but there are no numbers. The small construction investment is astounding and the trivial IT investment gob-smacking if the country is going to move forward. Those IT companies are big investors in places like India, China and related – countries with decent education and training systems and good management skills.

Their detailed table is hard to understand and relies on an Egyptian definitions/source, always perilous, that I’ve never heard of and don’t trust.

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Looking just at trade – US/Egypt – its been declining for a few years, was never much and dominated by US exports with Egypt producing little that the US wanted. 2/3rds of Egypt’s exports were textiles and apparel and I don’t think that will last following the recent most favored nation tariff deal with the US’s new best friend – India.

Image

US-Saudi trade is about 10 times Egypt trade, Lebanon trade with the US is smaller although its population is 1/16th of Egypt, Israel trade about 7 times larger than Egypt although its population is 1/10th Egypt. Economically Egypt doesn’t matter.

I checked out the Egyptian site of the government organization with the stats I don’t trust.

They are flogging the following in Luxor – maybe to Americans – I doubt it.

1. The Old Olympic pool site looking over Khalid Bin Al Waleed Street. For another hotel. Given vacancies only someone as mad as Prince al Waleed would be interested.

2. In the failed New Thebes industrial zone NE of the city an opportunity to build trailers for farmers. I don’t think you get a choice – as if anyone ever did. Seems like small scale/profit/technology manufacture with no export potential likely to be crushed by a Chinese product produced in the tens of millions of units. Wonder what the need for such a product is?

3. To dig a mine looking for bentonite. You will have to dig up the New Thebes industrial zone which is the site allocated to the mine but the big benefit is that one of the uses of this clay product is as a laxative – as if Egypt needs more of this. Miners have stayed well away from Egypt for generations for good reason and the Canadian-Australian gold miners 200ks East by NE of Luxor have been driven to distraction but have stayed.

4. etc. Various ‘projects’ which shows you how hard working the now fired Governor has been over the past few years – blankets, retail development (there is no money in Luxor), date paste (market unknown), drying of figs and grapes in the sun (haven’t people been doing that in some places for thousands of years), a new tourist village (possibly 6) out in the desert al least 1k from the Nile at Tod about 4-5 k’s SSE of the city, a convention center and fair (?) in central Luxor (with the Military moving into this line of business in Cairo) and something to do with pharmaceuticals (no local skills but a very interesting company in this line at Asyuit).

Its insane but what’s new about that over the past 70 years – central planning always fails. Its clear from the above rot that there is no government economic or jobs plan for Luxor.

This website which produced the Luxor information would have been better programed by a 12 year old. http://www.investinegypt.gov.eg/English ... ofile=true


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Re: US Companies Truck in Investments.

Post by Major Thom »

It's all pie in the sky to me Hafiz, why they do this I do not know because many people have good memories...
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Re: US Companies Truck in Investments.

Post by newcastle »

The investment opportunity site is fascinating. I think Hafiz is spot on in suggesting that 12 year olds could have done better. The Luxor entry includes some interesting "statistics"


http://www.investinegypt.gov.eg/english ... orateId=16


Are there really 91 post offices in the Luxor governorate?

It gives the average family income as 21,999EGP p.a which sounds ok until you realise the average family must be 3-4 persons at least. Unless my arithmetic has gone astray, I make that around $1 per person per day...i.e. below the world poverty level. And that's the average.....some must be living on much less.

Happily the average expenditure is somewhat less than the income. I can't imagine they eat well on less than $1 a day...even if you ignore all expenditure other than food,
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Re: US Companies Truck in Investments.

Post by Hafiz »

Occasionally you get regional stats about Egypt which tell you not only about the disparity of class but region. Upper Egypt is dramatically poorer than the rest of Egypt, has always been so and nothing is happening to change it.

The passivity of Upper Egyptians does nothing to change it - but I don't blame them for this injustice which shows itself in health, poverty and literacy stats. I do blame 'visitors' who think that everything is not worse than not OK or that better tourism will fix it.

Here is a bad joke. Mad, unjust, command and control Stalinist economics run by fools does work for a while. As long as it suits the nomenklatura - the inner group. I had a friend who visited Russia in the middle 70's who couldn't believe the standard of living - including secret western supermarkets - of the children of 'high officials' and their access to alcohol, drugs and parties in elegant outer Moscow dachas.
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Re: US Companies Truck in Investments.

Post by Major Thom »

I would hate to see an Egyptian business plan... :lol: :lol: :lol:
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