Egypt’s Minister of Trade and Industry Ahmed Samir on Monday chaired a roundtable meeting for the foodstuff companies, which discussed means of increasing investments in the industry, as well as the opportunities available for expansion in the Egyptian market. Participants also discussed increasing exports, and deepening local food manufacture.
The food sector is one of the key strategic ones of the national economy, offering thousands of job opportunities, both direct and indirect, as well as providing the needs of the local market, Minister Samie told the roundtable.
He said that the sector’s total exports over the first seven months of 2023 year amounted to $2.635 billion, compared with $2,384 billion over the corresponding period last year, marking a rise of 10.5 per cent.
The meeting was attended by top officials of Egyptian and international companies operating in the country, in addition to representatives of the Chamber of Food Industries (CFI).
The roundtable seeks to establish a dialogue platform for representatives of the food industries companies and the ministry to discuss the proposed solutions to overcome the challenges facing the sector.
The challenges include the lack of production requirements and hard currency, resulting from the economic repercussions of successive global crises, Samri said.
It also aims to address increasing investments and exports with the international companies specialized in the food industries, he added, noting that Egypt is a regional manufacturing centre for most companies operating in the food industries.
In the meantime, Minister Samir reviewed the ministry’s efforts to achieve the state goals pertaining to localisation of the production supplies industry. He explained that they had identified 152 investment opportunities in the industrial sector, including products and production supplies in food, pharmaceutical, engineering and chemicals.
This offers a great opportunity for companies operating in food industries to obtain local needs of raw materials and supplies from the local market.
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