Tariq Qabil underlines challenges faced

Egypt’s Minister of Trade Tariq Qabil said that the sector of medical equipment and supplies has huge investment opportunities in front of domestic and foreign capital, saying that supervisors work to ensure the safety of locally manufactured products, especially as the medical equipment sector is an important sector concerned with the health of the Egyptian citizen.

He stressed, during an interview with “Arabs Today”, the keenness of his ministry to upgrading the quality of domestically produced products through meeting the international standards. He added that the Industrial Development Authority supervises the determination of the percentage of the local component in medical supplies.

He added that the number of companies operating in Egypt in the medical supplies sector is 230 companies, the size of investments 4 billion pounds, noting that the market size of medical supplies and devices in Egypt is 900 million dollars, 75% of which are imported and 25% manufacturing in the local market.

He stressed that the industrial sector witnessed a significant decline in 2014 and 2015, and 2016 was the worst in the industry during the last five years, due to several reasons, including high energy prices, low industrial land and other pressures, such as foreign exchange shortage.

He praised the measures taken by his ministry to contain the challenges facing the industrial sector, saying that among the most important measures taken by the ministry were those related to the rationalization of imports, which not only reduced the import bill for low quality products, but also increased the growth of industrial production, because such a decision gave way to the Egyptian industries.

He stressed that these steps were immediately reflected on the industry indices in 2017, which witnessed a recovery, as indicators of industrial production growth during the last three months of the decline to growth by 42%, which did not happen before.

He revealed that his ministry is going to proffer three industrial complexes for investors with two months. He added that those complexes situate in 10th of Ramadan town، east to Cairo. The minister affirmed that establishing of more factories push the national ahead.

He added that the Ministry of Industry handed 2.4 million square meters to 21 investors in Sadat City in Menufya Governorate today، Saturday. More two million square meters will be presents in the next month. The minister revealed that 300 factories will start production within a year.