CAIRO - Leather production is one of the many local industries that lost their position in both the domestic and foreign markets during the last few decades. They were victims of the lack of vision combined with neglect shown by successive governments of Mubarak regime towards different Egyptian industries, which used to enjoy a significant position in foreign markets. Egyptian leather products were widespread in some Arab and European markets until the 1990s, when they started to suffer decline because of the incredible rise in price of the raw materials and cheap Chinese products being dumped on the local market. “We used to export natural leather shoes to the Gulf states as well as to countries of Eastern Europe since the number of shoe workshops surpassed those of furniture in Damietta,” said Mahmoud Mowafi, a shoe merchant and former secretary of the Damietta Society for Shoe Production. Mowafi affirmed that the present recession in leather production is due to the incredible price rise of the raw material and the dumping in the market of Chinese products that are of greatly inferior quality to local products. Many of the former workers of this industry have abandoned it to work in the sweets and furniture industry, for which Damietta has long held a high reputation in foreign and local markets. Shoe worker Gamal Zakariya told Al-Messa'iya evening newspaper: “I have been working in this industry for more than 30 year now, since I left the sweets industry for that of leather because of its good returns at that time. However, two decades ago, leather workshops went into decline and from the number of leather workshops exceeding 10,000 employing more than 50,000 workers, the number declined to less than five thousand, when the workers moved from this occupation to other more profitable fields.” Arguably, the leather industry could be the locomotive of development for the national economy if more funds were pumped into its arteries to build more workshops, reviving this significant industry and employing more young people in it. In this regard, the Government could utilise the fund recently allocated by the United Arab Emirates Government for promoting small industries in Egypt an estimated at one billion dollars. Part of this fund could be used for regenerating this leather industry for which Egypt was renowned. A start should be by creating new training centres as well as the workshops, depending on the specialised and skilled craftsmen still living. The State could then create a fund to subsidise the raw materials and import requisite technology to enable high quality production to compete in the local and regional market. These suggestions for the leather industry are also applicable to many other industries, especially that of furniture. It is true that, in this respect, Damietta continues to occupy a special position on the world map in this industry, but is currently suffering a setback because of the invasion of relatively cheap Chinese products of China. Herein lies the importance of speedily implementing a plan to salvage the furniture industry in the Mediterranean town and port, before its further deterioration following that of the leather industry, especially given that 80 per cent of the governorate's income is directly or indirectly related to making furniture. Damietta, which is some 191kilometres north-east of Cairo, could turn into the largest centres in Egypt for small and intermediate industries for export. It has one of the largest Egyptian harbours, which could facilitate transporting its products to world markets, especially those of Europe. What is required is good planning and execution to restore these traditional industries that the governorate used to be famous and offering all governmental support to enable the manufacturers to have relatively low-cost production of high-quality goods capable of competing in the world market.
