By the Gazette Editorial Board Economic experts have made it clear that boosting production and exports is crucial to achieving the required economic reform and boosting the economic growth rate. The government has adopted a bundle of measures to create an investment-friendly climate. However, there have been several calls for it to help hundreds of defaulting factories to start re-operating. Many of these factories had already closed down in the wake of the stormy events that followed the 2011 Revolution. And since then they have regrettably failed to resume their activities for technical, marketing and financial reasons, despite occasional official promises that the case of the faltering factories will be given due attention. It is no secret that the government's delay in addressing this file has been frustrating to the business community and to ordinary people who believe that the reopening of these factories should have been at the top of the government's agenda. Now the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has launched an initiative to reschedule the debts of around 5000 plants and to exempt the owners from paying interest on debts. Accordingly, banks will lend a helping hand to those plants in a bid to accelerate their re-entry into the market. In fact, the initiative is not limited to investors but to thousands of small farmers as well, who owe money to the banks. The initiative, announced by the CBE Governor, Tarek Amer, has revived hope in the possibility of re-activating the market. More importantly, it has conveyed to local investors a strong message of support, even if it has come later than expected. However, investors say that more facilities, such as lowering the interest on loans, have to be offered particularly to the industrial sector to help increase the GDP and provide job opportunities. According to the latest figures released by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, the unemployment rate has dropped to 10.6, per cent this year, down from 13.6 last year. The rate should come down further with every new project that comes into business. There is no accurate record of the exact number of defaulting factories that need assistance. So, the CBE initiative will surely help produce a list of all the cases, as a starting point for solving a long-standing problem. Despite the serious efforts so far exerted to improve the local economy, the challenges are not over yet.
