CAIRO - Four companies won licences for steel plants in Egypt, local papers reported on Wednesday, as the government seeks to boost production and lower imports of supplies for a fast-growing construction industry. The four firms are Port Said National Company for Steel, IIC for Steel Plants Management, Al-Marakbi and Al-Wataniya. The production capacity of the factories will be announced soon, local newspapers including al-Mal and al-Masry al-Youm quoted Amr Assal, head of Egypt's Industrial Development Authority (IDA), as saying on Wednesday. Demand for new housing in the Arab world's most populous nation has kept its construction sector strong despite the global economic downturn, making Egypt a major market for steel exports, mainly from Turkey. A boom in construction and infrastructure spending will help drive an estimated 36 percent increase in Egypt's production of reinforcing steel by 2017, an Egyptian steel official told Reuters on December 13. Brokerage CI Capital said the new licences would help tackle a domestic shortage of steel rebars and allow property developers to avoid supply bottlenecks. Announcing the steel licence tender in October, the IDA said it planned to authorise additional annual capacity of 2 million tonnes of rebars and 1 million tonnes of billet steel.
