Investment Minister Ashraf Salman requested all financial consultancy offices registered with the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), start a preliminary evaluation of 125 public holding companies. The evaluation comes within a governmental plan to restructure the public sector in order to increase local income. Consultancy offices will use a unified measurement mechanism to evaluate the companies' performance, their current state, and their international state. It will be conducted in cooperation with the Leadership and Management Development Centre (LMDC) to plan for the development of the sector, according to Salman. In a Sunday press release, Salman stated the ministry is planning to improve the performance of companies and the working conditions for the employees. He added that they will also make use of all the untapped assets through partnership with the private sector. Structuring also includes unifying the performance index for all companies and restructuring these companies as per the studies and plans within the given results. In the press release, the minister added that the meeting is set to start the plan of restructure. He noted the importance of changing the mechanism through which public companies work to make administration more professional in order to save the government and the people's money. The plan is also to lift the burden off the public budget, which carries the debts of these companies and pump new investments. The meeting was held in LMDC in the presence of chairmen of all 8 public holding companies affiliated to the Ministry of Investment and the financial investors registered in the EFSA, as well as Ashraf Ibrahim, Chairman of LMDC. Salman said the development plan for the public sector is within a comprehensive reform strategy for the investment environment and will restructure the economic climate to fulfil the needs of the current situation. The government's vision to manage the current state with the system exceeds the accumulative challenges and speeds up the positive results. It will occur in parallel with the legislative reform of the investment laws and their related direct or indirect activities. According to Salman, the ministry is concerned with creating an investment climate for private and foreign direct investments. It is also concerned with the reform of state-owned companies, both public sector companies and joint-stock companies as they both contribute to the GDP rate by up to 15%. He pointed out that the ministry is working hard to improve public sector companies, maximise exploitation of the vast resources available. It is also looking to maximise the benefit and the returns to the state and staff of these companies through use of necessary expertise. He added that there is a need to take advantage of the experiences of the consultancy offices in areas selected by the holding companies, each in their respective fields. This would help within the framework of accelerating the implementation of the restructuring plan. "Activating the mechanism of linking wages to production and profit is very important," Salman said. This will contribute to improving companies' situations and motivate employees to increase production and encourage the spirit of competition between companies. He pointed to the start of employees training programmes across several fields, including training in the principles of reading and understanding budgets, budget figures, and companies' financial statements for them to share the responsibility of the advancement of these companies. On their part, several companies' chairmen pointed out that changing the corporate culture and dealing with numbers contribute to the revitalisation of work and production systems. It will also exploit corporate assets, pointing out that there is a monthly follow-up on the performance of companies by the Ministry of Investment, which makes companies eager to set up plans for production, training and implementation.
