Egypt's government is set to hold an international bid next week for the rights to purchase and develop 14 square kilometres of land in an economic investment zone located in the northwest area of the Gulf of Suez region. The area comes from a total of 20 square kilometres of land currently available for development in the zone, a number which the Ministry of Investment seeks to increase to 100 during the project's next stage. Prime Minister Hesham Qandil said that he expected the zone, which includes territory in East Port Said, to attract upwards of $100bn in investments and create 700,000 new job opportunities for residents of the region. The zone was first opened for development on Saturday when Prime Minister Qandil signed an agreement with the Chinese company EG-TEDA to develop six square kilometres of land. He discussed further plans to establish an electric energy production and water desalination station in the northwest are of the gulf region, in addition to government plans to provide natural gas to factories operating in the region. He further discussed plans to adhere to contracts signed by Egypt's previous government and a number of foreign countries regarding the export of gas, saying that the country's current administration could not and would not overlook such agreements. Qandil, when discussing the recent discovery of new oil and gas reserves, further stated: “We cannot afford to waste energy or use it inefficiently," adding however that these reserves would not be exploited in the short term. Investment Minister Ossama Saleh, stated that Egypt's Dispute Resolution Committee recently suggested three times to remove 26 million metres of land up for development from investors, to then be reallocated at half of its prior value. He added that the Ministry of Investment was set to release its ruling regarding a merger between QInvest and EFG Hermes before 3 May. Alaa Al-Hadidi, spokesperson for Egypt's cabinet, stated that the government sought to achieve a 3% increase in economic growth this year, with the hopes of seeing this number increase to 4.1% in the following year. Average growth for 2022 was hoped to stabilise at 7%. Saleh stated that Egypt's government was currently in the process of implementing a number of development plans to help jump start the economy, the most prominent plan being the development of the Suez Canal region, which is expected to bring in $100bn in revenues for the Egyptian government.
