Minister of Trade and Industry Nevine Gamea; CEO of the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI), Mohamed Abdel Wahab; and 70 different investors discussed the challenges of Egypt's industrial sector, GAFI said over a statement on Sunday. This meeting is under the directives of Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to address current investment challenges, improve the country's business climate, and attract new investors. The meeting is part of a series of get-togethers that GAFI holds with investors to find applicable solutions for different issues that investors face in coordination with several entities in order to increase the size of investments within a framework of the state plans. During the meeting, a number of investors called on Abdel Wahab to help them in obtaining new land areas to establish new projects or to expand their existing ones. He said that he will submit their call to the Industrial Development Authority (IDA), promising to facilitate procedures of licencing, and obtain and update temporary industrial registration in coordination with the IDA. For her part, Gamea asserted her keenness on meeting with businesspersons individually or in groups to closely identify their problems and support them in finding solutions, noting that stating the issue is the first step to solving it. Gamea said that the meeting aims to put a systematic framework to eliminate the issues facing these businesses, noting that she will respond to all the points raised over the meeting next Thursday. Moreover, Madbouly stressed the necessity of improving GAFI's performance in finding solutions to investors' problems during the first gathering of the GAFI board which came after the management of the authority was transferred to the cabinet after its reshuffle in December 2019.
