Mubarak's talks in Germany deal with economic, political relations

Egyptian President Mubarak's talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder next Tuesday within his European tour, that includes also Romania and Russia, will deal with means to further economic and trade relations as well as political issues and Middle East developments.

A report by Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade Youssef Boutros Ghali on Egyptian-German economic relations considered Germany one of Egypt's most important trade partenrs in the 15-member European Union.

"Egypt is also the third biggest country receiving German financial and technical assistance," said Ghali.

Ghali noted that Germany was contributing to 148 investment projects in Egypt with a combined capital of LE 3.913 billion and an investment cost of L.E 5 billion.

Al-Saeed Fouad Qassem, Head of the Trade Representation Department, said that the volume of trade exchange between the two countries hit some 4.3 billion Deutsche Mark (DM) in 1999, including Egyptian exports of a value of 465.7 million DM and imports from Germany of 3.8 billion DM.

"Egyptian exports to Germany in the first half of 2000 hit about 550 million DM, with an increase vis-a-vis exports in 1999, thanks to the Egyptian trade representation office in Berlin," he said.

"Egypt's most important exports to Germany are yarn, garments, cotton products, potatoes, aluminum ore and iron ingots while imports include plastic, electronic and chemical products and meat," said Qassem.

He noted that the volume of German assistance allocated to Egypt in 2000 reached 110 million DM, including 21.2 million DM as a non-refundable grant, with the rest in the form of a soft loan, in addition to technical assistance of 15 million DM.

Qassem also referred to Egypt's overall cooperation agreement with Germany signed with the EU in 1977, to be replaced by the partnership agreement initialled on January 26 last.

He added that Egypt signed agreements with Germany in the fields of investment encouragement and protection in 1974 and prevention of dual taxation in 1981.