World Bank help ISMAIL Serageldin, director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and former vice-president of the World Bank (WB), has said the WB was carrying out development projects in Egypt for the next three years worth $2 billion. At a seminar organised last week by the Middle East News Agency (MENA), Serageldin said Egypt had taken steps in the right direction during the past few years after it chose to implement major reforms in vital sectors. Pressed on the role played by the US in the WB and how to decrease some of its influence on developing countries, Serageldin said the WB was based on independent governance. "WB officials do not take the nature of a regime into consideration when deciding on any resolution. This is the main legacy of the bank," said Serageldin, adding that the bank was independent of governments and that the staff was internationally recruited and based on high professionalism. "Politics is forbidden," he said. The WB's board of governors, he said, represents the member states, each with its own share of capital. "The board of governors are the shareholders who own the bank," Serageldin said. The World Bank operates through five major institutions -- the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development whose mission is to fight poverty by means of financing states through providing loans to governments; the International Development Association which carries out the task of helping the world's poorest countries reduce poverty by providing interest-free loans and grants; the International Finance Corporation which is the private sector arm of the WB; the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, especially designed in 1966 to facilitate the settlement of investment disputes between governments and foreign investors; and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency which helps promote foreign direct investment in developing countries. Etisalat goes 3G THE ETISALAT consortium that will set up Egypt's third mobile telephone service, signed a contract earlier this week to launch and operate the new network. The consortium, which includes the UAE-based Etisalat company, National Bank of Egypt (NBE), Commercial International Bank (CIB), and the Egyptian Post Authority (EPA), announced during the signing ceremony that it had already paid the licence fee of LE16.7 billion to a National Telecommunication Authority (NTA) bank. The new service will operate according to third generation (3G) technology by February 2007, after about three months as a trial period. Attending the ceremony was Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technology Tareq Kamel, who expected some 15 million new subscribers to join the world of mobile phone users in Egypt. This would raise the number of subscribers from 20 to 40 per cent of the population within the coming four years. The consortium has yet to choose the name of the new network that will be competing with the current two GSM operators, MobiNil and Vodafone. Etisalat will enjoy a competitive advantage as it will operate Egypt's first 3G network. According to calculations based on Etisalat's licence fee, each of Vodafone and MobiNil would have to pay an estimated LE3.34 billion in licensing for the new technology. Meanwhile, press reports in the Gulf said that the Etisalat-led consortium is considering bidding for an international telecommunication service licence, when the Egyptian government opens a tender in the last quarter of this year. Textiles exports up MINISTER of Foreign Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid announced recently that Egyptian textile exports to the US rose by 44 per cent under the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) agreement, to reach $165 million in the past three months. According to official figures, the total value of textile exports since the application of the QIZ agreement in February 2005 is estimated at $555 million. Last week, Rachid met textile manufacturers and representatives of the Exports Councils for Textiles and Ready-made Clothes to discuss problems hindering their export business. During the meeting, cotton exporters asserted the importance of regulating the cotton trade and developing news ways of picking cotton. Textile manufacturers said that the Exports Support Fund has played a positive role in supporting and promoting the sector, and expected an increase in textile exports. Some 50 projects are undergoing expansion at a cost of $200 million, and are expected to start production during the fiscal year 2006/2007.
