By Ashraf Sadek: CAIRO, August 15, 2018 - The government is exerting strenuous efforts to increase production, reduce imports to save hard currency, and create jobs for the nation's young people, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi said after opening a giant industrial facility in Beni Suef Wednesday. The facility, in this southern governorate, includes two modern cement and marble factories, which President Sisi said would help meet the local market requirements in construction materials and would create more than 12,000 permanent and temporary jobs for young people in Beni Suef. Beni Suef Governor Sherif Habib said the cement factory, which has three production lines, would produce 37,000 tonnes of high-quality cement per day, and the marble factory, which was built on an area of 20,000 square metres and has three production lines, would produce three million square metres of polished marble per annum. The Beni Suef facility, which was built and equipped by the Armed Forces, would make use of the local raw materials and meet the market demand on cement and marble, President Sisi said after also opening two cement production lines in the Northern Sinai town of el-Arish via video conferencing. He said that it was regrettable that Egypt exported only raw marble to foreign markets because it did not have the required facilities for processing and polishing it. But with this new modern factory, only cut and polished marble will be exported at a higher price and thus Egypt will earn more hard currency each year, he added. President Sisi said that the government had started carrying out a LE150 billion plan for developing more than 120 defaulting public sector companies and turning them into profit-making entities that would play an active role in the national economy. The shares of these restructured companies would be offered for sale to the public on the local stock exchange so that the citizens would be partners with the government in revenue-generating projects, President Sisi said. He said that the new factories, which were built and equipped in just 18 months, would produce high quality cement and marble that would meet the needs of the local and foreign markets. "Each factory has been set up in accordance with the internationally-recognised industrial standards and is an environmentally-friendly facility that uses advanced technology for producing high quality cement and polished marble," the president Said. Using advanced machines and applying modern technology in these two factories would reduce the waste of raw materials from 60 per cent to just 10 per cent, President Sisi said. He added that the government had taken serious steps to modernise the marble industry in many governorates such as Cairo, Aswan and Minya. He said that he would open six Beni Suef-like marble factories in the Upper Egyptian governorates next year. President Sisi said that the government had already started improving the working conditions of the workers of private marble quarries by providing them with training programmes on the use of modern machines and by raising their wages. He said that the government's philosophy for increasing production was based on improving the working conditions of workers especially when it came to building new factories. "That philosophy calls for giving workers high wages, incentives, and allowances and providing them with good working conditions at the workplace," President Sisi said, adding that an average monthly wage for a government-owned cement factory worker exceeds LE12,000 ($674). President Sisi pledged that his administration would never take any action or measure that would be harmful to workers at government-owned factories or their families and children. However, he said that the government-owned factories should be run in accordance with the market-oriented economy otherwise these facilities, whose assets are worth billions of pounds, would incur huge financial losses and become a burden to the state. President Sisi said that when the government allowed the private investors to join the cement industry sector to reduce imports and increase the market supply of that vital construction material, they had brought with them modern technology to produce a high-quality product, whose price was determined by the mechanisms of supply and demand. At present, a tonne of locally-made cement is sold at a market price of LE1,300 ($73). But, after the government started developing its cement factories and opening new cement manufacturing facilities to bring about a market equilibrium, the price of one tonne of cement ranged between LE1,000 and LE900. The newly-opened government-owned cement factory in Beni Suef together with the upgraded ones would be a driving force for the national economy and construction industry, President Sisi said. He added that he had instructed the government to earmark LE200 billion for developing state-owned factories, which employ more than 210,000 workers. "So far, the government was successful in treating default in 80 factories out of 122," President Sisi said. He said that the Beni Suef industrial facility was not the last development project for Upper Egypt. "It will be followed by a raft of development projects, which will be inaugurated soon to create jobs for the citizens of Upper Egypt," President Sisi said. "In the next few months, I will launch an agricultural venture that covers the four governorates of Beni Suef, Minya, Assiut, and Sohag," he added. The project, he said, would be implemented in an area of 400,000 feddans that had been reclaimed and would be offered to young farmers.
