Minister of Foreign trade and Industry Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour announced that EGP 1.5bn will be allocated to continue building the infrastructure for 32 industrial zones in 22 different Egyptian governorates. "Cooperation protocols," between the ministerial funds that aim at supporting the building of infrastructure and developments in industrial zones and the different governorates will be signed. The minister stated that pumping this money is intended to accelerate the implementation of development projects to allow these zones to have access to industrial necessities such as roads, electricity, drainage and water in the governorates of Upper Egypt and Nile Delta as well as the Suez Canal, Sinai and Cairo. The ministry added that this will assist the foreign investors to meet their "work needs" and to attract capital as well as offer new work opportunities and increase the rates of industrial growth. The president of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) Mahmoud Garf pointed out that the EGP 1.5bn was made available after the coordination between the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Industry's "supporting the establishment and developing an infrastructure fund" Garf added that the EGP 1.5bn comes as part of the total EGP 2.6bn, which received the Ministry of Finance's approval in the stimulus plan, and the additional EGP 400m that was allocated for the same purpose in the general budget of the 2013/2014 fiscal year. Garf added that the protocol that was prepared state that the executive bodies of these industrial infrastructural projects have the responsibility to supervise the projects' developments. He mentioned that the industrial areas located in Sinai will be operated by the armed forces, as decided by the cabinet.
