Investors committed US$10.7 billion to projects in Egypt on the second day of a summit meant to spur the ailing economy, organizers said yesterday.
The three-day gathering in the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh is meant to show the world Egypt is open for business again to draw investors after four years of instability and turmoil that followed the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that ousted former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
The agreements include a US$6.5 billion deal with Egypt’s Orascom group and the Abu Dhabi-owned International Petroleum Investment Co to build a coal-fired power plant over four years, they said in a statement. The deals were signed on Saturday.
Photo: Reuters
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has staked his legitimacy on fixing the economy and the conference is seeking a sign of confidence in the country’s political stability — given a persistent Islamic militant insurgency and the government’s crackdown on Islamist opponents, which has killed hundreds, landed tens of thousands in prison and brought heavy criticism.
Al-Sissi was to address the conference yesterday afternoon.
Of Saturday’s agreements, Cairo Financial Holding, formerly led by Egyptian Investment Minister Ashraf Salman, had the second-largest investment — US$1 billion into a tourism fund.
Preliminary engineering and finance agreements amounting to US$5.8 billion were also signed, along with a further US$5.4 billion in loans and grants from international partners and organizations.
More deals were scheduled to be announced yesterday, organizers said.
The meeting began on Friday with massive commitments from key Gulf allies the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Saturday’s focus shifted to the private sector, with several companies announcing agreements, including some from Germany’s Siemens AG, which agreed to invest US$10.5 billion with projects to build power plants that will boost the country’s electricity generation capacity by up to a third.
Corporate leaders on Saturday offered upbeat assessments of Egypt’s economic prospects and confidence in the government’s ongoing efforts to streamline the country for business.
CEO Joe Kaeser said that the deals were signed on Saturday after negotiations with al-Sisi, “who drove a hard bargain.”
“It will create 1,000 jobs and we’re ready to start as soon as possible,” he said. “We’ve been doing business here for over 110 years so we’ve seen crisis come and go... It’s not about [us] coming and going.”
He said the package included binding agreements worth about US$4.6 billion. They include a new 4.4-gigawatt power plant in southern Egypt, a project to generate 2 gigawatts of wind power and a new wind rotor blade factory.
The other agreements were memorandums of understanding to build other plants and substations over the coming five years.
Italian petroleum company Eni was also among several entities who signed preliminary agreements on Saturday. Egypt’s Oil Ministry said in a statement that the Eni deal was worth an estimated US$5 billion and would develop oil and gas resources.
General Electric Co CEO Jeff Immelt said that despite the risks, Egypt is a key piece of its global strategy, which considers opportunities over the long term.
“We don’t expect things to be perfect but we think over the longer term our investments will pay off,” he said in a panel discussion at the event, adding that GE had committed on Friday to invest US$200 million in the country.
Mohamed El-Erian, chief investment adviser for multinational financial services company Allianz, said the difference between now and before the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak was that the current leadership is serious about bringing prosperity to the people.
However, there was some skepticism at the event. Arif Naqvi, chief executive of UAE’s private equity Abraaj Group, said that Egypt needs a lot of capital very fast, and that requires more than just government cheering.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”