Mubarak's visit to Romania, Russia gains momentum
Egypt, Economics, 6/2/2004

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak's recent visit to Romania and Russia reflected Egypt's keenness to maintain regular contacts and build bridges of cooperation with the outside wor1d, given the political weight and huge economic potentials of these two countries.

Mubarak's talks with Romanian President Ion I1iescu focused on ways of bolstering bilateral economic cooperation and setting up a free trade zone with the ultimate goal of enhancing the value of bilatera1 trade exchange to reach $ 500 million by 2007.

Egypt and Romania cooperate in the domains of culture, science, natural gas, petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. Both sides tackled the establishment of joint ventures in the field of furniture, besides conducting researches on increasing the oil seeds production.

Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmi will visit Romania shortly to execute the signed agreements in the oil domain and probe with his Romanian counterpart extending natural gas pipelines to Europe as well as exporting Egypt's gas to Romania.

Egypt's Trade Counselor to Romania Ashraf Hamdi said that the Romanian market is considered an important one in East and South Europe as the value of bilatera1 trade exchange hit $150 million including $29million in Egypt's exports to Romania.

Meanwhile, the economic file in Mubarak's talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin laid emphasis on issues of mutual interest and cementing bilateral economic cooperation.

Egypt and Russia have signed two agreements including one on exchanging economic information and facilitating trade deals between Egyptian and Russian exporters and the second on establishing an Egyptian-Russian Businessmen Centre.

Minister of Foreign Trade Youssef Boutros Ghali said in his meeting with the Egyptian and Russian businessmen that the balance of trade between the two countries has realized a deficit in Russia's favour to the tune of $ 332 million.

Ghali said that the Russian market ranked third in terms of exporting tourists to Egypt with 500.000 tourists in 2003 Total tourist revenues worth $ 410 million. Russia contributes to 12 Joint projects in Egypt with an aggregate investments of L.E 23 million.

Head of the Egyptian-Russian Business Councel Ahmed Sheha said that the Council discussed establishing a number of ventures in the spheres of tourism, electricity, oil, communications an agriculture, pointing out that Egypt's exports to Russia could be increased via benefiting from Russia's 25 percent customs reduction on imported commodities.

Both sides held talks on means of enhancing bilateral cooperation in the domain of manufacturing medicines and and technology transfer, especially with regard to raw materials that are needed for developing vaccines.

Additiona1ly, the Egyptian and Russian businessmen agreed on setting up a joint company for manufacturing spare parts needed for the Egyptian iron and steel factories.

A Russian delegation is expected to visit Egypt in September to probe the prospects of trade and investment cooperation in light of Mubarak's recent visit to Russia.

To experts, the visit will have far reaching impact on Egypt's global economic cooperation in the forthcoming phase amidst the impending future challenges on the regional and international arenas.

Previous Stories:
  Egyptian businessmen seek pharmaceutical cooperation with Russian companies   (5/29/2004)
  Russian tourists to Egypt increase by 50 %   (4/13/2004)
  Romania requests purchase of Egyptian natural gas   (2/21/2004)
  Egypt, Romania discuss free trade area   (9/22/2003)
  Four joint Romanian - Egyptian projects   (4/21/2000)

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