New international IT companies invest in Egypt

Egyptian Minister of Communication and Information Technology Ahmed Nazif witnessed, early in the week, the signing ceremony of a cooperation agreement between telecom Egypt and the Swedish Ericsson telecommunications company at a total value of 200 million euros.

The agreement comes as part of the ministry's efforts to encourage the foreign technology firms operating in Egypt, whereby these companies would pledge to invest part of their revenues inside Egypt with a view to increasing the added value. The agreement is the first of its kind, whereby the Swedish company will invest in Egypt over the coming five years.

Negotiations are now underway with the French Alcatel, the German Seimens and the American technologies companies, Nazif pointed out.

Meanwhile, Nazif said that the volume of new local and foreign investments pumped into the information technology IT sector hit LE 1.100 billion in 2001 vis-a-vis LE 625 million in the previous year. Nazif pointed out that the volume of Egypt's IT exports is expected to hit $ 100 million.

Investment in the field of communications and IT sector in Egypt saves 33 per cent of the manufacturing costs and 25 per cent of the designing and development costs. Meantime, Cairo will host the first meeting of the Arab businessmen working in the field of communications and information technology on may 27-29 on the sidelines of the 2nd Arab conference on information technology (IT).

Mohamed Shafiq Gabr, head of Egypt's international economic forum, said this meeting comes in application of the resolutions of the 1st Arab conference held in Cairo in march 2001, where this council was set up to be a nucleus for coordination and cooperation among Arab institutions working in the sphere of communications.