Since the government announced the implementation of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone), many companies have sought to land investment opportunities there, including automotive companies. Chairperson of the SCZone and the Suez Canal Authority, Mohab Mamish, received, earlier this year, a delegation from Volkswagen to discuss the investment opportunities in the SCZone and learn about the incentives and advantages that are offered to investors. Earlier, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail met with the regional director of Mercedes, who spearheaded a delegation of the company's representatives, while Mamish was in attendance. During the meeting, Mamish said that there has been an agreement with Mercedes on the allocation of a major area in the SCZone to establish a distribution and logistics centre for the Egyptian market and surrounding markets. The representatives of Mercedes said that Egypt represents an up-and-coming market for them, praising the measures taken by the Egyptian government to solve the problems of investors and create an environment conducive to injecting further investments. Moreover, a Polish company operating in the manufacture of spare parts, seeks to establish a factory for spare parts in Egypt, which would be its first plant in the Middle East, even though the company owns 60 factories around the world. The Japanese-French alliance, represented by the Japanese companies Toyota and Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha and the French company Bolloré, is seeking to establish a hub at the port at East Port Said for car trading, where they met with Ahmed Darwish, former SCZone head, who signed a letter of intent between the authority and the global alliance. The hub, which the alliance seeks to establish will be the most recent of its kind in the Middle East and would place Egypt on the international map of car trading in ports, which reflects positively on the financial resources that the SCZone aims to realise. China-Egypt TEDA also contracted to develop the SCZone with Sokhna Logistics Car City to establish an integrated automotive logistics city on an area of 260,000 sqm worth EGP 300m. Since it was founded in November 2015, the SCZone has become one of the most important economic zones. Through both Darwish and Mamish, the SCZone has contracted on a number of important projects, such as promoting 23 sqm in Sokhna area in the first year, as well as the contract with China-Egypt TEDA. In addition, the SCZone has successfully negotiated with Russia on the implementation of a Russian industrial zone in East Port Said, which is set to be completed over three phases starting this year, with a total investment cost of $6.9bn. The project is expected to provide 35,000 direct and indirect jobs. About 90% of the labour that will be hired for the projects of the Russian industrial zone will be Egyptians.
