The government has developed a comprehensive strategy to improve the investment climate and create a suitable environment encouraging the business community to expand investments in Egypt.
This is thanks to the economic and structural reform policies Egypt initiated a few years ago to attract foreign capital, to provide more promising investments, and to offer many incentives for foreign businesspeople.
The cabinet information centre issued a report yesterday highlighting the praise of the global financial institutions of the resilience of the Egyptian economy, despite the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic.
Egypt is among the world’s best destinations of foreign investments, the report said.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said
In 2020, foreign investors put $5.9 billion in Egypt, which accounted for 15 per cent of total foreign investment in the African continent.
Egypt ranked top of the investment league in Africa last year.
South African financial services provider Rand Merchant Bank’s (RMB) annual report ‘Where to invest in Africa’ also positions Egypt as the continent’s top investment destination, which was the first to bounce back during the pandemic.
Egypt maintained its top spot with an improved business sector, placing it 8th in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ rankings.
Egypt also ranked fourth among the top 10 countries with an index of 88.7 in The Economist’s ‘Normalcy Index’.
The expansion in production and discovery of natural gas was the main factor for making Egypt an attractive investment destination, the cabinet report said.
During fiscal year (FY) 2020-2021, net foreign direct investment in Egypt was $5.2 billion, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) said.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that the net foreign direct investment is set to reach 3 per cent of gross domestic product in FY 2024-2025.
The IMF also expects net foreign direct investments to record $16.5 billion in FY 2024-2025.
Oxford Economics, a leader in global forecasting and quantitative analysis, said Egypt has a diversified industrial base and skilled human resources, which are considered attractors for foreign investments, the cabinet report said.
The Economist said a raft of structural reform programmes the government implemented in recent years have made Egypt the first destination for foreign direct investment in the African continent in 2020 and the second in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2019.
