This year’s MIPIM sees Egypt’s first-ever pavilion showcasing the country’s urban development programme and investment opportunities.
“There are challenges, certainly, in Egypt now,” deputy minister Khaled Mahmoud Abbas told MIPIM News. “But we’re well on course to achieving the necessary goals in terms of housing, utilities, urban redevelopment, infrastructure and employment.”
Abbas is Deputy Minister for Monitoring National Projects within Egypt’s Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities. He spoke of the challenges and solutions facing Egypt’s housing and urbanisation programme.
“We have to run fast to keep ahead,” Abbas said. “We’re a young country. We have a three-tier structure of social-housing programmes. And we are looking to work with private developers where we will sell them the land in various sized plots and they take on the developments from there.”
The key thing, he said, was that the programmes are real: “They’re happening. They’re not just hopes and plans. We are actively driving the programmes forward.”
Social programmes for low-income housing are being built at the rate of 350,000 units a year; middle-income housing is being built at 300,000 units a year. “In total our housing programme is the largest such programme in the world. The key to investing in Egypt is that things happen. They don’t just stay on the drawing board.”
Over the next five years, around 3.5 million young Egyptians are projected to join the labour force and this presents a challenge, Abbas said. “However, this also creates a tremendous opportunity for faster growth; we can support the emergence of a strong and vibrant private sector to productively employ this emerging generation of workers.”
The deputy minister said the signs look good for Egypt. “Our reforms, which began in 2014, have created economic and financial stability. Our message at MIPIM is: The best investment opportunities now are in Egypt.”
This and more in the MIPIM News Issue 3; read it in full here…!
