A consortium of local companies completed the first phase of their plan of communicating with international companies operating in Egypt, according to Moqbel Fayyad, Chairman of Prosylab holding company. The communications have been set up to discuss the possibility of an alliance regarding IT projects to be presented during the March Economic Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh. The Economic Summit forms part of the government's plan to stimulate the economy, boost growth, and attract more foreign investment. According to Fayyad, there has been communications with hardware and software companies in Egypt, including IBM, HP, Fujitsu, Microsoft, and Oracle. He added that they welcomed cooperating with the alliance. Ten giant communications sector projects are expected to be offered at the Economic Summit including land register, agriculture holding, mechanisation of national archives and health insurance system. The local coalition under establishment will fund needed public projects and obtain dues through revenue sharing. The coalition has also commenced on a new phase in its plan to negotiate with Egypt's banks to discuss funding of the expected projects to be presented in the Economic Summit. The importance of banks' roles has been stressed due to the high cost of the projects, as the cost of the smallest project, the mechanisation of registration offices, amounts to EGP 650m. According to Fayyad, these steps come as part of the preparations the local coalition is performing to participate in the pre-tender. It is expected it will be offered during the coming weeks to choose the companies that may compete for the proposed projects during the summit. It is notable that nine domestic major companies in the communications and information technology fields announced their cooperation to establish an Egyptian company to compete for implementing the giant projects. These projects have all been offered by Ministry of Communications, according to PPP system. The most prominent companies in the alliance were Prosylab Holding, Raya and Giza System-ACT.
