Another high-ranking Chinese business delegation was in town last week, reports Wael Gamal More than 166 Chinese business delegations have visited Egypt over the last three years. This week's -- led by Commerce Minister Bo Xilai -- is one of the biggest yet. The 150 businessmen representing 55 of China's biggest companies arrived in Cairo on Saturday evening for a four-day visit. The Chinese minister met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif to discuss economic cooperation; he also met Trade and Industry Minister Rashid Mohamed Rashid to sound out Chinese investments in Egypt. Xilai also attended the Egypt-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Seminar, a forum designed to bring Chinese businessmen and their Egyptian counterparts together to discuss doing business in Egypt. Developing bilateral relations, and especially economic cooperation, has topped both countries' agendas since last January's summit meeting between Mubarak and Chinese President Hu Jintao. The Chinese have been especially quick to initiate action towards these goals. According to Egypt's General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI), by June 2004 Chinese investments in Egypt amounted to LE923 million. These included investments in 103 companies with LE338.4 million in capital. Chinese companies working in the free zones had also invested $27.3 million in 10 companies with $18.5 million in capital. In October, a major boost in the Chinese investment dynamic took place at the Guangdong-Egypt Economic and Trade Cooperation Fair, where companies from China's Guangdong province entered into 22 cooperative projects in Egypt with a contractual value of $922 million. Bilateral trade between Egypt and China, meanwhile, jumped from $750 million in 1999 to $1 billion last year, and is expected to grow by 50 per cent to $1.5 billion by the end of this year. Xilai said these achievements were made possible by "China's economic success over the past two decades, which enabled it to secure more and better business deals with our Egyptian friends." The minister said his government is encouraging Chinese companies to invest and do business in Egypt. "I hope the Egyptian government, working with the Chinese side, would help those companies find new opportunities in the country. Egypt can be an exporting centre to the whole region." It helps that the Chinese have a precise plan of what needs to be done. The Chinese vice premier, during a visit to Egypt last month, introduced a four- point proposal for the further development of bilateral economic and trade cooperation. The plan includes enhancing contacts between enterprises from both sides and strengthening trade relations in their complementary fields, expanding bilateral cooperation in energy, telecommunications, aviation and other high-tech areas, jointly investing in other countries and catalysing better cooperation in the Suez economic zone. This week Xilai expressed his hopes that the Egyptian side would adjust its related policies to continue to create better conditions for bilateral cooperation. The Egyptian side considers the recent reform measures taken by the new government as pivotal to the future of bilateral relations. "Cutting taxes and customs tariffs, reviving privatisation and reforming the banking sector is the beginning of a real transformation of the Egyptian economy," Rashid said. That meant, that in addition to recent achievements, "there is still a lot to come," he said, It is Egypt, however, that will clearly have a lot to think about when dealing with a giant economy like China's. The tremendous -- and increasing -- trade imbalance is one issue. "Our exports to China were only $160 million in the first 10 months of 2004, while our imports were above $1.2 billion," said El- Sharqawi Hifni, the head of the Egyptian Commercial Service. "This is a huge imbalance." Also, since Egyptian exports are mainly raw materials including crude oil, steel, cotton, linen and aluminum, while its imports are basically manufactured goods, competing with the Chinese in that context will be anything but easy.
