Plan to upgrade foreign trade sector to help increase exports
Egypt, Economics, 3/13/2002

The Foreign Trade Sector at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, will embark on a modernisation programme for its departments that is due to start next month. The program is financed by a USAID grant of about LE40 million over three years within the framework of a strategy to promote exports.

Minister of Foreign Trade, Youssef Boutros Ghali said that the development and modernisation process would later on cover all the sectors of the Ministry through funding and foreign assistance from various international organisations and the European Union (EU).

Head of the Foreign Trade Sector, el-Sayed Abul-Komsan, stressed the significance of developing and modernising the sector and upgrading technical performance of its staff to qualify them to make studies and research on the foreign target markets instead of making use of foreign experts in that field.

Abul-Komsan added that the USAID financing would also cover training programmes to be organised by a specialised US firm, which would also bring in foreign experts and instructors.

He also stressed the role of the sector saying that it was entrusted with formulating, implementing and following up foreign trade policies to cope with the related rapid developments in world markets together with handling the trade problems that might arise such as dumping.

It also undertakes the task of negotiations and follow up the implementation of trade agreements with other countries.

"Modernisation of the sector will be based on achieving a technological shift through establishing a database to be updated every now and then on the producers, volume of production, sales, prices and stock in stores besides the volume of supply and demand at the level of each industry separately," he said.

The database would also include information on the rival imported goods, their prices both at home and at the exporting countries, he added.

The modernisation plan would also include setting contacts with the exporting private sector, work on continuing the dialogue between producers and exporters and set permanent and efficient links with the foreign target markets through the Egyptian trade representation offices abroad.

Referring to a proposal that the US agencies and importing companies of the Egyptian products would examine imports at the Egyptian ports before exportation, Abul-Komsan said that if that proposal put into effect it would achieve good results.

"It will help us avoid the extremely strict measures having been applied by the US authorities following the September 11 tragic events. We hope the same measures be taken by other countries such as the European Union countries," he said.

Talking to reporters, Abul-Komsan also said a delegation from the EU Dumping Committee, would start a visit to Egypt on Friday for talks with officials at the Ministry of Foreign trade on the possibility of establishing a mechanism for handling the dumping cases before they are raised against producers or exporters from any of the two sides.

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