CAIRO: A professor of investment at the Institute of National Planning, Dr. Abdel Aziz Ibrahim Abdel Aziz, talked about the controversy of negative impacts expected as a result of a dam built in Ethiopia. Negative impacts will affect Nile Basin countries and Abdel Aziz warned those effects will reflect on Ethiopia first and then Egypt's quota of the Nile river, amounting to 55 billion cubic meters, 10.5 billion cubic meters of which are used for industrial purposes and drinking water. Abdel Aziz pointed out the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government expanded the construction of tourist resorts and golf courses, swimming pools. They wasted billions of cubic meters of water in such projects, pointing out irrigation an acre of land for golf courses, drains more than 18,000 cubic meters per year. Abdel Aziz said the low per capita to 582 meters in 2025, saying the water poverty line is 1,000 meters per capita per year, criticizing the previous government's policy of canceling fines on violators in the cultivation of rice, while it should be criminalized for rice cultivation and for cultivation of bananas, sugar cane. Demands are made to stop exporting them abroad, because it drains water cultivation in Egypt. Abdel Aziz is pushing for a law to regulate water usage and to push golf course owners to use groundwater.
