CAIRO: “There has never been a better time in Egyptian history than now, at least not since 1952,” said Ossama Hassanein, senior managing director of Newbury Ventures. He told Daily News Egypt that the most important thing entrepreneurs and youth can do now is take advantage of new entrepreneurship opportunities. Hassanein was speaking at the Entrepreneurs' Society Entrepreneurship Convention on the topic of: “In the rebuilding of Egypt, how can we learn from the ethical failures of the past and prevent them in the future?” In a country where corruption and bribery have run rampant the past few decades, he explained the idea of bad ethics and how it can be broken down into three categories that include global, national and personal. The global segment was divided up into pollution and propaganda and Hassanein talked about the illicit trading and practices that make up the national subdivision with the example of GDP between Egypt and Turkey. “Fifteen years ago Egypt and Turkey had the same GDP per capita at $2,000,” he said. “Egypt had a growth rate of 60 percent and went from $2,000 to $3,200 in those 15 years while Turkey grew 1,000 percent from $2,000 to 20,000.” He went on to explain the personal section with the subdivision of self-interest and breaking the rules. He gave the example of one man creating a company, selling the stocks on a product not yet market tested and then when the company crashed due to no real product being released, everyone, including bankers and investors, wanting their money, but the man already had taken profits. Hassanein also gave the example of self-interest in chain marketing by discussing a scenario of one taking $1,000 from another and giving them 24 percent per year with a 10 percent commission for adding someone else to give more money and so on. He noted that this is beneficial for the individual, but does not add impact into the market. In trying to pinpoint what sector seems to have the greatest number of entrepreneurs currently, Hassanein believes that the IT sector is what seems to be the majority with the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook as well as iPhone applications being used as their specialization. He points to the number of Egyptians competing in the upcoming MIT entrepreneur competition at the end of March in Lebanon to be 40 percent of Egyptians out of a total of 3,800 participants as evidence for Egyptian presence in the sector. As far as the future of the Egyptian economy and local entrepreneurs, Hassanein is quite optimistic. “Before you had much less of a chance to succeed unless you meant you were a corrupt thief, but today there is a new generation and they are 100 percent committed,” he said. In Egypt, given the government situation, the GDP was not very effective, but Hassanein has hopes for a better future with the new direction and government. “If we stop the corruption that happened during the Mubarak regime, our GDP will double, even without getting money they stole back,” he said. It is his hope that with the decrease in corruption and the newfound pride and drive the Egyptian people have, they will be able to capitalize on this in all sectors, including entrepreneurship.
