The Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC), referred to as Economic Summit, ended on Sunday after three days that witnessed the signing of agreements between the Egyptian government and companies, and the announcement of investments worth billions of dollars. During his closing speech, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi called for holding the summit every year in Sharm El-Sheikh. Al-Sisi requested from Siemens to reduce the period of their project implementation to 1.5 years instead of three years. Siemens AG reached agreements with the Egyptian government to build a 4.4 GW Beni Suef power plant, along with a wind power plant, President and CEO of Siemens AG Joe Kaesser said at the Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC). "The president told me we should make good financing, so we said we'll provide a 12 year financing for these projects, and agreed on a 1.6% interest rate. I really made a very good price," he told the attendants of the session. Al-Sisi said, during the speech, that the electricity capacity that will be generated through the Siemens project should be pumped into the national grid within 1.5 years to provide energy for investors. As for General Electric, Al-Sisi said that he called on the company to implement their project within eight months. On Saturday, GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt announced that GE is investing in a new $200m multimodal manufacturing, engineering, services and training centre in Egypt. The President said that he refused the timeframe of implementing The Capital Cairo project, saying that one of the proposed companies suggested completing the city in 10 years; however, Al-Sisi pointed out that Egypt's population will increase by 26 million after 10 years. Al-Sisi requested all companies implementing projects in Egypt to reduce their profit margins, "because Egypt needs these amounts".
