Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has pressed for applying good governance and pricing to the work system of factories affiliated with the Public Business Sector Ministry.
“We don’t want to see conditions of those factories deteriorate once again,” the president said as he inaugurated new expansions of a urea and ammonia nitrate plant in Kima district of Aswan in Upper Egypt on Tuesday.
The expansions are part of national projects that the president inaugurates during an “Upper Egypt Week”.
Sisi said that rights of workers should always be in the heart of any reform measures taken by those factories, stressing they should come first place.
No reforms should be made at the expense of workers’ rights; rather the government should bear the consequences, if any, of such reform, the president noted.
Sisi said that amending the pricing policy would enable factories to meet needs of the internal market and export to other markets abroad.
Addressing farmers, the president advised them to adopt advanced irrigation and agriculture systems in order to reduce consumption of fertilisers by 40 to 50 per cent. Those advanced systems would also help reduce water consumption and pollution, Sisi added.
He renewed calls for the private sector to contribute to the national projects because the public sector was, over the past forty years, not that efficient in terms of management. The outcome of the past four decades was negative and constituted a burden on the state, he explained.
It is important to activate good governance where the allocation of funds is concerned, Sisi stressed, noting that the private sector does not waste any money.
The president praised the Public Business Sector Minister, Hisham Tawfiq, for his keenness on maintaining public funds.
Sisi warned of repercussions of bad management of projects and public sector factories, reminding this was one reason behind what happened back in 2011.
Only Allah saved Egypt then from destruction and devastation for the sake of 100 million persons, the president said. This should not be repeated, he noted.
Sisi thanked the Public Business Sector Ministry for its efforts to upgrade the Kima plants complex, and stressed that the private sector should become a partner of development.
The president touched upon difficult economic conditions in Egypt that need a quantum leap to overcome.
We don’t need just success; we rather need a jump and a leap, Sisi said, stressing that a 20-per cent success will not be enough.
Such leap could only be made through good governance, pricing and management, he noted.
