In line with Egypt’s strategy that focuses on boosting the national economy and fostering foreign investments in the country, a ceremony organised on Sunday at the New Administrative Capital to launch the Egyptian-Chinese Entrepreneurs Association (ECEA) in the presence of Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait and Minister of Public Business Sector Mahmoud Esmat, the Former Secretary General of the Arab League and the honoury President of ECEA Amre Moussa, the CEO of the Egyptian Sovereign Fund (TESF) Ayman Soliman, the Head of ECEA’s Board of Trustees Magd El-Din El-Manzalawy, President of ECEA Omar Wang and the ECEA’s Secretary General Mohamed Alaa alongside with a bunch of association heads, parliament members, businessmen.
Within his speech during the event, Minister of finance Mohamed Maait stated that ECEA is a fresh platform for an effective and sustainable dialogue between the business communities in the two countries that aims at exploring more of investment opportunities in areas of priority to the state and that are closely related to the country’s sustainable development goals agenda.
That includes the promising opportunities in field of green transition, renewables, scientific research. Pharma industries technologies as well as the industrial techniques in a way that is consistent with the presidential directives to localise the advanced technologies in a range of economic sectors, according to Maait.
The minister also asserted the importance of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE) in terms of reinforcing China’s Silk Road Initiative, particularly through the Egyptian Chinese Zone for Economic and Trade Cooperation, thus contributing to boosting utilising the Suez Canal strategic zone as a logistic-economic hub.
“The Government of Egypt, in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy in Egypt, was eager to establish the ECEA with an aim of creating a platform for a continuous connection in order to discussing avenues of a fruitful and constructive cooperation in line with the increasing keenness from the two sides to boost the strategic partnership. Through launching ECEA, we are looking forward to jointly working to eliminate any kind of investment obstacles and attracting more of Chinese investments into the Egyptian market”, said Maait.
For his part, Former Secretary General of the Arab League and the Honoury President of ECEA Amre Moussa noted that the association has a mission of pushing forward the relation between the two countries in consistent with the state’s aspiration in the 21 century, as well as enhancing the cooperation between China and Egypt, especially amid the ongoing economic, health and political global challenges.
Moussa also said that investments between the two countries should support the new trends in the industries of tech, digital, artificial Intelligence (AI) and the environment, adding that Silk Road Initiative related projects between China and the Arab countries has shifted the cooperation mindset from colonial thinking into economic and cooperative one and that could support the cooperation between the countries going forward.
CEO of TESF Ayman Soliman stressed that the fund supports the efforts of attracting more investments into the Egyptian market across various sectors, especially the industrial and manufacturing ones, chiefly food processing as Egypt has a huge agricultural production that need more investments to localise its related technologies.
On his side, Head of ECEA’s Board of Trustees Magd El-Din El-Manzalawy welcomed the attendees, noting that Egyptian-Chinese ties have witnessed a notable development in all sectors and proved its ability to keep pace with the international and regional transformations and changes.
He added that ECEA is ready to enhance the bilateral relations and the current cooperation in the sake of the two parties.
“ECEA targets seizing the ongoing robust ties between the two countries to improve the collaboration between the business communities between the two countries, particularly under the Silk Road initiative, and create a good climate for Chinese investments, as well as benefitting from these relations in boosting the Chinese industries in the Egyptian market and achieving Egypt’s vision and strategy of localising industries of priority”, he explained.
ECEA is a platform meant to insure an effective level of partnerships between Egypt and China with an aim to raise the economic and cultural relations between the two countries.
It also targets increasing the Chinese investments in the Egyptian market and helping the Chinese companies to do its work.
ECEA is established in accordance with the Egyptian regulations. Egypt’s Ministry of Social Solidarity greenlights ECEA establishment on 22 February 2022 as an international and social entity with a legal identity.
