![]() “This loan gives foreign investors the right message and assurances that we are committed to reforms, and that these reforms are the right ones,” said finance minister Amr el-Garhy at a November press conference. With a new value-added tax and a free-floating, much devalued pound, Egypt hopes to send a strong message to foreign investors by finally gaining IMF approval for a three-year extended fund facility worth $12 billion, the largest such loan to a MENA country. In recent months, with no cards left to play, Egypt finally went ahead with painful but long-awaited economic reforms that had long been recommended by the International Monetary Fund. Despite the state’s high-profile efforts, new foreign investment to Egypt in fiscal 2015/16 totaled $112 million less than the year before. However, to date, the SCZone has attracted just one firm, China’s state-owned TEDA, a developer that has been in talks with Egypt about the plan since before the 2011 revolution. ![]() A few months later, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi unveiled a LE 64-billion upgrade to the Suez Canal, which not only aimed to dramatically increase canal revenues (despite the predictions of skeptical analysts who pointed to a decline in worldwide shipping traffic) but promised to transform the canal region into a global shipping industry hub, attracting private developers to the special new Suez Canal Economic Zone, where businesses would enjoy all kinds of investment incentives. ![]() In early 2015, the Egyptian government spent some LE 300 million on a splashy economic development conference in Sharm el-Sheikh that aimed to win back the confidence of foreign investors. ![]()
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