Reuters is at it Again.

[Hafiz]

Reuters is Turning Nasty Again.

Well they are a firm founded by Jews or worse still - Western, Liberal, Democrats – filth.

They have done a new in-depth article confirming the bleeding obvious about the economic power of the you know who’s in Egypt. Of course its all Jewish Western lies, as it also is with the New York Times, the BBC and everyone else not owned by the Government of Egypt/Junta/State Misinformation Service. Other newspapers in the west have been running a similar line for at least 3 years so its a standard not a debatable view.

Reuter’s point is that the growth in economic power by the uniformed geniuses is galloping.

The article fails to make enough about the lack of education, skills and experience of the military management class. They also make little of the difficulties of the private sector, who have to pay taxes and don’t get free military conscripts to work for them, but they are such a rotten corrupt group I’m not crying for them.

The article also fails to make the obvious point – tens of billions are being spent but will produce little in economic growth let alone jobs. The $US9 billion tossed at the canal is a good example – the increased income is negligible and probably would have happened without the extra investment. If it was a private sector firm/if there were proper accountants in Egypt the 9 billion should now be written off. The canal project was never based on a proper professional assessment of costs and benefits. This gives you an insight into the quality of government decision making and the intelligence of decision makers.

The failure to invest in skills/education is astounding – instead its Pharonic ‘mine is bigger than yours’ projects. The logic of the huge and expensive desalination and nuclear plants is also far from clear.

Particular points in the Reuters article:

The military owns 51 percent of a firm that is developing the new $US45 billion capital city 75 km east of Cairo. (The design for the city was done by a 2nd rate US firm that has no experience in city projects of this scale – indeed no experience of anything on this scale – the Chinese involvement in this is hard to work out – the final bill will likely be much higher/concealed – who is paying for this is not clear. They are also building Sheikh Zeyad new urban community – which has been incomplete/a failure for 25 years).

Figures from the Ministry of Military Production - one of three main bodies that oversee military firms - show that revenues at its firms are rising sharply. The ministry’s figures and the chairmen’s accounts give rare insight into the way the military is growing in economic influence.

In 2016, the military and other security institutions were given exemptions in a new value-added tax (VAT) law enacted as part of IMF-inspired reforms. (I think they were given an exemption from land tax in 2015 or earlier).

Receipts for a cup of coffee at private sector hotels, for example, add 14 percent VAT. Receipts at military hotels do not – so go to a military hotel. Employees at the military-owned Al-Masah Hotel in Cairo told Reuters that no VAT was charged when renting venues for weddings and conferences (a lot/most/all of these are military related functions as they are at the scores of other junta hotels – including one and possibly 2 in Luxor. So everyone pays a consumption tax except the insiders whose salaries are paid out of tax revenue to which they do not contribute).

The Ministry of Military Production is projecting that operating revenues from its 20 firms will reach 15 billion Egyptian pounds in 2018/2019, five times higher than in 2013/2014, according to a ministry chart. The ministry does not disclose what happens to the revenues. The chairmen of two of the firms said profits go to the ministry or are reinvested in the business. (There are no audited accounts or annual reports which confirm this nor any published State budget documents)

They are building a $US1 billion cement plant in an industry that already has over production, all loosing money so the objective might be to send the private competition broke. Cement factories don’t create many jobs.

The Military have signed a $US2 billion deal with the Chinese to build a factory to manufacture solar panels. This is something the military has no skills in and requires a skilled workforce Egypt does not have – even the Chinese had difficulty in this product area for a few years. Why the Chinese are taking this risk is not clear – in any event there will be few jobs and difficulty exporting a low status Egyptian product to a western market.

Non-oil foreign direct investment fell to about $3 billion in 2017 from $4.7 billion in 2016, according to Reuters calculations based on central bank statistics. (Private firms and western banks are staying away as are even the Gulfies – if jobs are to be created/unemployment reduced then foreign direct investment will need to be five times higher in high jobs growth industries).

(a western diplomat said) If an investor had a business dispute with the military, the commercial officer said, there was no point in taking it to arbitration. “You just leave the country,” he said. (This tells you there is no rule of law or justice system)

In 2015, the defense minister issued a decree exempting nearly 600 hotels, resorts and other properties owned by the military from real estate taxes.

Military companies receive an exemption from import tariffs under a 1986 law and from income taxes under a 2005 law. Cargoes sent to military companies do not have to be inspected.

At bustling Cairo squares, people line up to buy subsidized meat and other food handed out from trucks sponsored by the military.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/sp ... -military/

Maybe Reuters should pack their bags like the BBC, The Times of London, the New York Times and al Jazeera. Maybe they should hire security guards – retired US marines.

The IMF and World Bank ignore all of this. At the very least it means a major transfer of power to the military, away from the private sector and a power which does not rely on elections, Parliament, Cabinet, competitive tender, proper accounting/financial statements, cost/benefit analysis or anything to do with the citizen and which will last whoever is the next President. There is no public information on any of it – because it is a matter of national security – really!

All this activity will pay not one cent of taxes to support the programs the government delivers to its citizens. These businesses rely on government infrastructure to be profitable and an educated workforce but contribute nothing to either. They don’t even pay taxes to support the army.

Where the profits go is anyone’s guess. What salaries are paid to the military managers is not clear – nor whether they pay income tax on it. There is substantial evidence that conscripts perform servant/family based roles for senior officers.

Another related article makes the following points:

“Over the past four years, Egypt’s military has entered industries that had previously remained civilian, including manufacturing of refrigerators, air conditioners, solar panels, passenger buses, medical equipment, electricity smart metres and television sets.”

“The army is selling beef at reduced prices to people on the streets. It also sells vegetables, butter, bread, fish, chicken and milk.
Army trucks loaded with frozen food can be seen on major squares and in poor districts selling goods at far below market rates.”

There was another study a few years ago which looked at more indirect power/influence in very unusual areas. Here are some quotes:

“Take for example the “Health Sector” network. Our investigation and analysis showed that the Egyptian army has a strong influence on Ministry of Health through two minister assistants: Hisham Abdelraouf (Primary Health Care Assistant) and Elsayed Shahed (Financial Assistant). Both used to have official positions in army-affiliated agencies. This has eventually led to rewarding the army’s agency “Armed Forces Medical Services” with key projects to the Egyptian economy.

In most projects, the armed forces contracts with private sector companies, which are connected in a way or another to the army. As an example, importing the children/infants milk project was given to Pharma Overseas Company whose Chairman of Board of Directors is Ahmad Jazzarin, the brother-in-law of Vice Admiral Mohab Mamish, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority and former Commander of the Egyptian Navy. Speaking of the infants milk project, the army acquired it through what is thought to be a planned plot by eliminating all existing importers in the market and then manipulating the Egyptian public to ask the army to step in.

Moving to the other competitor, the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID), our analysis has shown that there are two key private sector companies linked to EGID that handle large scale projects in the health sector: The Egyptian Pharmaceutical Trading Company and Wadi El Neel For Medical Services. Until now, EGID’s influence in this sector is not as strong as the army’s. However, it is rapidly growing and it is clearer in other sectors. EGID influences MoH through the “Drug Planning and Policies Center”.

Drawing the “Health Sector” network allowed us to visualize and understand the links behind the conflict between “Pharma Overseas Company” and “Multipharma Group” over the Hepatitis C Sovaldi Drug Importing (a ‘Jewish’ drug invented by an Egyptian Jew kicked out in the 60’s and whose family assets were stolen by the Nasser military Junta). Such a conflict is part of the army’s struggle, along with its affiliated companies, to eliminate the private sector companies and declare maximum dominance over the health sector.

We applied similar analysis to other sectors, in which more complex patterns were identified. For example, in the “food sector“, we were able to identify a French and a Russian conglomerates (almost mafias) that dominated the wheat imports business. The former was backed by the General Intelligence Directorate whereas the latter was backed by the army. This was achieved through visually grouping relevant entities into communities, based on specific criteria and the availability of the data.

Studying the “tourism sector“, we were able to identify, through path-following, how the Egyptian armed forces leased important touristic spots to one of its authorities and directly competed with the private sector, creating unfair competition in its quest to completely dominate the whole sector.

Similar findings were created by studying the “petrochemicals, energy and minerals“, “communications“, “industry“, and “national projects” sectors. Also, we studied the organization hierarchy/structure of the army. Finally, we produced another interactive visualization showing the ruling families of Egypt since 1952. This has been covered in articles that we published.”
https://linkurio.us/blog/data-driven-in ... rettyPhoto

There are also recent purchases of TV stations by the Army but their influence and control of this sector is likely larger but hard to nail down. Why the Army needs to own TV stations is far from clear given the already near-Stalinist control of the media/censorship. http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/arabi ... -261529275 and https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2017 ... -generals/

There are also recent mandatory intimidating training courses/harangues conducted by the Military for media workers and the new legislation on the internet/power to close it down/monitor it. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origin ... urity.html

It also seems that they have recently taken over the Toshka assets from the feckless Saudi Prince Talal (Possibly 100,000 acres) for a trivial payment and added this to their already very large farm assets – all in breach of the limits on acreage allowed to be held by one private person/organization. The military involvement in the large, witless land reclamation project in the Western Desert is not clear.

Its looking more and more like the Burma military junta they built a mad capital they couldn’t afford in the middle of nowhere/somewhere easy to defend. I suspect the above information is just the tip of the iceberg.

At the very least the above is partial evidence of the incestuous nature of power and promotion and that merit based appointments might be rare. Marriage, blood and patronage relationships are hard to work out but seem the norm. It seems likely that relevant ability, skills and education are scarce which explains why many western commentators have always thought that the military businesses were very badly managed and frequently a waste of time and capital.

It also seems pretty clear that its pay back time against the private sector Mubarak millionaires.

The debt to the Chinese is another issue getting hot as other debtor countries realize what China demands – not nice. Another post.

[Who2]

I used to clean the windows of Reuters in Fleet St.
They had a sort of 10ft long Rolodex that went down floors it was part of their library, nobody seemed to mind
too much me perusing it, I also did the Mirror building.....

[A-Four]

I used to clean the windows of Reuters in Fleet St.
They had a sort of 10ft long Rolodex that went down floors it was part of their library, nobody seemed to mind
too much me perusing it, I also did the Mirror building.....

Yer, I remember Reuters in Fleet Street, left hand side towards town, now they are on some land near the Black Wall.

Talking of the Mirror my dear Dr, did you ever come across Captain Bob, the old place at Chancery is now a glorified Sainsbury's,....for Christ sake.