Rowan in rig supply deal for Shell Egypt project Rowan Cos. said Thursday it received a letter of intent from Shell Egypt to contract for its new Tarzan Class oil rig, the J.P. Bussell. The deal is for two wells that are expected to take 20 months to drill, with options for three extra wells, Rowan said. Drilling at the initial two wells should begin in the third quarter of 2009 and bring in about $111 million in revenue. To drill the additional three wells would take 30 months, the company said. The J.P. Bussell is being outfitted in Texas and is expected to be finished in November. -AP ITIDA leads Egypt delegation to GITEX Dubai 2008 Egypt s IT industry development agency (ITIDA) is leading the country s largest delegation of 27 Egyptian IT companies to exhibit at GITEX Dubai 2008, the Middle East s largest technology exhibition from October 19-23, 2008. The size of the delegation highlights the strength of the country s ICT ecosystem which has been pinpointed in recent analyst reports as the world s fastest rising IT outsourcing hotspot. The Yankee Group in its report titled Can Middle Eastern countries fulfill the Eastern promise? published in July 2008 concluded: Egypt is by far the Middle Eastern country currently best positioned to take advantage of the boom in outsourcing. The report also identified Dubai as facing major challenges in convincing enterprises and IT service providers that it is a smart shore location. With its relatively young population, a multilingual workforce, and a large and burgeoning talent pool of IT professionals, the Egyptian outsourcing sector has received strong government support. It is projected that the Egyptian outsourcing sector will generate revenue of more than $1 billion by 2010, four times the 2005 revenue. The World Bank in its annual Doing Business report has also recognized the Egyptian reforms. The country has topped the list of global reformers that are making it easier to do business in two out of the last three years and continues to be the leading regional reformer. The latest multinational to embrace Egypt is Teleperformance, one of the world s leading providers of outsourced CRM and contact centre services, which has set up a new contact center in Cairo that will be home to over 2,500 workstations. IBM has just inked a deal with the Egyptian government to set up a Nano-technology research center in Cairo and pledged its support to a number of training and educational initiatives that will cement cooperation between the country and the leading company. -MENAFN Redrafting COMESA government purchases agreement Egypt will take part in the re-drafting of a government purchases agreement of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) member states, said the head of the government services authority, an affiliate to the Finance Ministry. Egypt s participation in activities of the recently-formed committee will provide a major opportunity for Egyptian suppliers to penetrate markets of COMESA member states and take part in government tenders offered by the COMESA member countries, Khalid Noufal said in statements on Thursday. COMESA member states are Burundi, Comoros, D.R Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. -MENA UNIDO organizes agriculture conference in Egypt The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) will hold on November 26 an international conference aiming at finding creative solutions to agricultural problems. The two-day conference, held in cooperation with Egyptian government and the Sekem Initiative, comes in response to the current world food crisis that largely affects developing nations, according to a statement by the organization. The Sekem initiative aims to meet challenge of sustainable human development by contributing towards a comprehensive advancement of the individual, the community and the environment. The organization is trying through the conference to boost agricultural production companies in developing countries and increase food supplies to help them overcome the devastating effects of food crisis, the statement said. Owners of agricultural companies, representatives of public and private technical and financial institutions, and non-governmental bodies are taking part in the conference. -MENA Egypt, France trade at ?2 billion Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid and John Felix Bagano, the new French Ambassador in Cairo, met and discussed ways to increase bilateral trade and joint investments between Egypt and France. Talks included following up on the developments of the initiative for the Mediterranean, which is chaired by Egypt in common with France. It also included reviewing joint projects to be put up for this initiative and activate what was agreed upon between Egypt and France during the first meeting of the Egyptian-French initiative on activating the Union for the Mediterranean which was held in Cairo. Rachid said that he discussed with French Ambassador organizing meetings with his counterparts in the southern Mediterranean countries as well as with those undertaking the initiative of France to consult on the initial list of projects to be put on the initiative in which these projects reflect the needs of the countries of the South and reflect the aspirations of its citizens. He also explained that the meeting dealt with preparations for the next meeting of the Egyptian-French presidential business to be held in Cairo at the end of December, indicating that the coming stage would witness meetings with Egyptian businessmen to discuss topics to be raised at the next meeting of the Council and attract more French investment in Egypt and the establishment of joint ventures between businessmen in both countries.
