BossoneMedia.com

February 2007
Encouraging Development
By bringing together international institutions, local reformers and private partners, the development sector in Egypt is set to finally see some results

By Andrew Bossone

Most people know the Chinese proverb about the value of teaching a man to fish rather than giving him one, but there is a similar proverb in Arabic that originates in Egypt: “The noblest charity is to preclude a man from accepting charity, and the best alms are to show and enable a man to dispense with alms.”

It appears these old proverbs are finally coming into fruition: In the past three decades, foreign governments and aid agencies have poured money into development projects in Egypt — only to complain that after the donor stops sending money, the project falls apart.

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January 2007
Virtual House Calls
A new pilot telemedicine program in a remote village is just the beginning of a bid by global tech giants to transform societies worldwide, Intel’s CEO tells Business Today Egypt in an exclusive interview

By Andrew Bossone

Some say ignorance is bliss, but don’t tell that to technology titans Intel and IBM. The two computer hardware firms are investing heavily in the concept of patient-centric healthcare, where individuals have better access to medical services and information in their medical records. It’s not just about patient empowerment, though: IBM and Intel believe this is part of the solution to the global problem of surging healthcare costs.

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March 2007
Bit-by-Bit: A Story of Bytes and Books
The world’s IT giants are lining up to buy into the Egypt’se-schools initiative —two are even feuding for a piece of the pie

By Andrew Bossone

Some say it takes a village to raise a child, but what about the whole country raising one? That’s the idea behind putting technology in schools under the Egyptian Education Initiative (EEI), which began at the 2006 World Economic Forum in Sharm El-Sheikh.

Under the first phase of the initiative, which will last for three years, 2,000 of the nation’s 36,000 schools will be equipped with computer labs and high-speed communication infrastructure. The idea is that once the entire country’s schools are wired together by computers, a community of teachers, students, parents and experts will be able to address many of the issues facing Egyptian education today.

“Technology is only a tool,” says Hoda Baraka, deputy minister of communications and information technology (MCIT). “When you give the students and the teachers IT in the schools, you can have more methodologies for learning. If you would like to have a connected community, then technology will give you the platform.”

Of course IT on its own is not a panacea for the many challenges Egypt’s ailing education system now faces. It has to be part of a larger program of reforming the curriculum, training teachers and improving the overall quality of schools. At the very least, though, implementing IT in schools will be important for improving basic skills such as reading and writing, especially since the national literacy rate still remains below 60%.

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March 2007
Credit Where Credit is Due
A new credit bureau will allow more consumers access to a range of financial services, with far-reaching implications for the Egyptian economy

By Andrew Bossone

The un-banked portion of our own population find loan requests blocked by bank requirements calling for salary levels, bank accounts and sometimes even collateral that they do not have. To get the money they need, many Egyptians turn to the gaam’eya, the home-grown borrowing collective that is similar to the susu in the West Indies, tanda in Mexico and kaes in Korea.

In a gaam’eya, a small group of people agree to each contribute a set amount each month, with a different person collecting the total every four weeks. There’s no official paper work, no collateral requirement and no minimum income needed, just a handshake agreement among the participants. It’s a common practice across the social spectrum, from children to adults, street sweepers to salesmen. Whether it’s a religious practice, as some argue, or simply a folk custom, the gaam’eya serves as an alternative to the formal banking system of lending, of which many consumers have negative perceptions.

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January 2007
Grow Green
Agricultural niche players Sekem and Wadi Foods have discovered green isn’t just an eco-friendly trend — it’s also the color of money

By Andrew Bossone

It’s often said that the largest of trees comes from the smallest of seeds. When Ibrahim Abouleish opened the Sekem Farm on a plot of empty desert, his critics must have thought he was crazy. But now, with a network of crops covering more than 70,000 acres of organic farmland, he is all smiles.

To celebrate the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Sekem project, Abouleish stood proudly on the stage of his farm’s amphitheater with his son Helmy by his side and an audience of prominent business leaders, biologists and Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Amin Abaza in attendance.

“To start from nothing 29 years [ago] to go to around 70,000 or 80,000 acres [28,300 or 32,300 hectares] now — having in mind that we want to go to 6 or 7 million acres [2.83 million hectares] in Egypt — it is still at the beginning of the road,” Helmy Abouleish says. “But I see the momentum.”

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January 2007
Year of the Technophiles
If ever you had a doubt, Egyptian consumers have proven it once and for all: They are, like almost everyone else across the globe, tech junkies.

By Andrew Bossone

I feel like a guy in front of a store window, jaw dropped, gawking at the newest mobile phones. I’m no longer shocked when a taxi driver pulls out his mp3 player or when I see a television screen mounted inside a car. If the last few years brought new tech toys into the country, then 2006 was the year we could finally use them. One could easily overstate the significance of all these gadgets, but the fact that technology giants, including Intel, Microsoft and Google, are sending their CEOs here means these companies respect the significance of the Egyptian market.

“If you look at the structure of the internet, Egypt is at center of one of the most important highways,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at a recent gathering in Cairo. “By the way, so everybody knows, it’s the Suez Canal. You thought the Suez Canal was important for boats? It’s important for fiber [cables] because the fiber goes right through it. And so the fact that [Egypt] is so central to the structure of the internet, it’s very helpful in terms of having broadband and bandwidth for the kind of technology we’re doing here.”

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December 2006
Threading the Gap
In two years’ time, the QIZ will be a dead letter for Egyptian textile exporters. That’s just 24 months in which to solidify relationships with US importers and start preparing for massive new competition from Chinese and Indian players.

By Andrew Bossone

Sometimes, it’s not just about technology. Instead of spending their time calculating thread counts or sitting at a spinning wheel, the nation’s leading textile players are debating issues including vertical integration and adding value to cotton while simultaneously bracing themselves for what many analysts think will be a revolutionary change in the industry.

And that change will be spurred by foreign developments: In 2007, the European Union will completely open its markets to textiles and ready-made garments. The United States is set to follow suit by the end of 2008, a pledge US President George W. Bush affirmed during his recent trip to Asia. The result: Western consumers will be inundated overnight with Chinese goods, and no one expects other industries to be competitive with China and its 47 million textile workers.

As matters now stand, the Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ) agreement with the US is helping prop up the domestic textile industry by eliminating tariffs to the US provided the Egyptian goods made by qualified companies contain at least 11.7% Israeli content and 35% local value-added.

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November 2006
Super Sizing Egypt?
News Analysis: Under attack abroad for its contribution to the Western world’s obesity problem, McDonald’s is changing eating and consumer habits in Egypt, too

By Andrew Bossone

DRIVING SOUTH ON highway I-95 on the United States’ East Coast, it’s easy to tell when you pass a town: The giant golden arches of McDonald’s hover near the road exits. I-95 runs from the northernmost state, Maine, to the southernmost, Florida, with many changes of scenery along the way. But what’s constant in every town is the dominance of fast food chains.

On a trip a few years ago, I counted the number of Waffle House restaurants, 24-hour southern breakfast diners with distinguishably tall, black-and-yellow signs; I stopped counting somewhere around 37.

The remarkable uniformity across thousands of miles and towns has given rise to the nickname ‘the United States of Generica.’ New Jersey is so filled with big highways, gated communities and strip malls that when people say they live there, the next question is not, “Where in New Jersey?” but “Which exit?”

Is the same thing happening here? Uniform housing communities are popping up from Sinai to Sixth of October, from the eastern stretches of the North Coast straight down the Red Sea. A good way to tell you have reached Ain Sokhna from Cairo is when you see the KFC sign in the distance. Heading to the World War II battlefields of El-Alamein? Fast-food eateries welcome you off the desert highway.

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November 2006
Orange with a Twist
With new juice and milk products on the market and more in the works, Al-Sakr Foods is optimistic about its aggressive expansion plan

By Andrew Bossone

THERE'S AN OLD ADAGE about battle plans that applies equally to those who engineer the launch of new products: Even the best-constructed plans never survive first contact with the enemy. It’s a topic about which Al-Sakr Food Industries, maker of Rotana El-Halouba butter, ghee and other agrifoods products, has developed significant expertise in recent weeks as it launched new milk offerings (Milkcow and Bashayer) and the Twist line of juices.

The drinks division, formed in 1998, expanded this year with a multi-million-dollar investment in a state-of-the-art factory in Borg El-Arab industrial zone.

“I saw a chance to make a brand in this business,” says Ahmed Al-Sakr, managing director of Al-Sakr Food Industries, Al-Sakr Food Products and Sakr International Investment. “For me, it’s good business. In the long term, you can increase your share each year.”

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October 2006
Start Your Engines
There are plenty of obstacles to the Arabization of the internet, but as Egypt welcomes Google to the Middle East, we just might be turning the corner

By Andrew Bossone

The linguists, academics and Arab nationalists who for years have bemoaned the lack of Arabic content on the internet may soon be able to call it a day: Google, the global search-technology giant, has arrived in Egypt, signaling that Arabic could yet prove profitable on a regional and, indeed, global scale.Although Google regularly receives applause for its innovation and creativity, rarely does it offer a product before it is ready. That explains the announcement of its launch here in June — three years after the company began building its Arabic knowledge base. In essence, Google’s arrival says the technology is maturing.

Still, Google is ahead of the game. One of its main competitors, Yahoo, has yet to launch services in Arabic. MSN Arabia, the Arabic-English website for Microsoft (offered in partnership with Orascom Telecom (bt100 number 1) subsidiary LinkdotNet) launched in 2001. MSN Arabia is a portal, or a website that offers resources and services, such as email, forums, search engines, article links and online shopping malls, whereas Google aggregates and organizes information and gives these portals, including local websites, tools to enhance their own services — and generate revenue.

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October 2006
Which Ummah?
From the ‘Nation of Islam’ to the Ummah:A look at Islam and race in America

By Andrew Bossone

It's hardly news that the average American has plenty of misconceptions about Islam, but the idea of Muslims in the Americas can be puzzling to people here, too. The 8 to 10 million Muslims in the United States are, understandably, a diverse group, ranging from recent immigrants, to second- or third-generation American-born citizens (or beyond), to converts of every possible background.

But one group, calling itself the Nation of Islam (NOI), has often earned more attention than the rest put together.

This is not Al-Ummah Al-Islamiyya, the nation of Islam binding Muslims together worldwide. In fact, the NOI only represents a small fraction of American Muslims: Estimates of its numbers are around 20,000, or less than one quarter of one percent of all adherents to Islam. What’s more, this ‘nation of Islam’ is deliberately exclusive: At times it has been rightly considered to be more an arm of the black power movement than a religion at all.

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October 2006
What's the Score
Carrefour isn’t ceding even a yard to Spinneys in the hard-fought retail game

By Andrew Bossone

A tiff that looked like it could turn into a cafeteria food fight has fizzled out into a schoolyard football match, and Carrefour Country Director Herve Majidier says he will be the one scoring the goals, leaving the competition short of breath.

Last month, Majidier called Business Today Egypt to respond to comments Spinneys Managing Director Michael Wright had made about Carrefour in the magazine (see our story “The Miracle of Modern Retailing” in our September, 2006 issue) — comments he believes to be inflammatory and untrue. Like a proud politician who has just found himself in the midst of a negative campaign, Majidier, a plain-speaking Frenchman with a cordial manner, prefers to refer to the competition with pronouns or says, “I don’t even want to mention the name.”

“I am not going to reduce my level and get into the special and small details,” he says. “It is not for me to tell the people, ‘I am the best, because we are very important people.’ We are nothing. We are nothing.”

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September 2006
A Recipe for Success
After executing a rare management buyout, EMRM is looking to shake up the nation’s fast-food chain industry with a four-ingredient recipe for success

By Andrew Bossone

Stop someone on the street and ask him to name a fast-food chain in Egypt and odds are he’ll come up with an eatery owned by one of two companies: Americana (master franchiser for KFC and Pizza Hut, among others) or Mansour Foods (McDonald’s), which dominate the restaurant industry in Egypt.

But a new group, the Egyptian Company for Modern Restaurant Management (EMRM), headed by industry veteran Ahmed El Aawar, is getting ready to turn the heat up in the market after executing a rare management buyout.

A veteran of McDonald’s Egypt, El Aawar was about to become the chain’s operations manager when he left to take the post of director of operations at KFC. In early 2002, he made the leap from KFC to El-Sewedy foods, where he became CEO and helped build the upstart chain of Wessaya restaurants. El Aawar could have sat back and watched the profits pour in as quickly as his restaurants’ kitchens drop French fries into hot oil. Instead, he’s now sitting in his office overlooking the pitch of Nasr City’s Al-Ahly Club, doing his best to mask a certain anxiousness as he comes face-to-face with what it means to be an entrepreneur, not a salaried employee.

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September 2006
A Commercial Break
A new judicial reform commission trying to untanglethe nation’s business laws is laying the groundwork for new commercial courts

By Andrew Bossone

Anew judicial commission is out to change the way we do business by bringing the nation’s commercial codes into line with global standards — and laying the groundwork for a new system of commercial courts.

Chief Justice Hesham Ragab, a high-profile member of the 12-person legal panel, which was established by prime ministerial decree in 2004, but is only now getting down to business, says the commission is looking to draft reforms that will make doing business easier and more transparent for everyone from the government and the largest multinationals down to the smallest local entrepreneurs.

The reforms, he says, will quite literally change the rules of the game.

Few have bellowed for change as loudly as foreign governments representing investors who would love to do business with a resurgent Egypt, but only if they feel their rights are protected. Is the law clear, they ask. Can a business easily enter and exit the market? Are there adequate legal protections? Are disputes resolved in a timely manner?

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August 2006
Spinnin’ ’n Weavin’
With one textiles-industry success story in Oriental Weavers, a handful of privatized garment makers and cotton ginners are looking to break into the big leagues. Here’s how.

By Andrew Bossone

Few sectors of the economy have as rich a history as the cotton and textile industries, where Egyptian firms were once among the best in the world. Today, there are a mere handful of standouts looking to make their mark in a segment dominated by China. Dozens more — state-owned and newly privatized alike — are struggling with baggage left by decades of nationalization and neglect, and painfully few of them are making the difficult decisions they need to make to become competitive, whether it’s trimming and upgrading labor forces, updating equipment or exploring what the global market is really eager to buy.

A group of the largest cotton and textile companies were privatized 10 years ago and began trading on the Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange, but the majority have failed to update anything, from their factories to their designs, to say nothing of their marketing campaigns, proving that private ownership is not necessarily synonymous with increased efficiency and the retention of existing markets — let alone the penetration of new ones.

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March 2006
Something’s Rotting From the State of Denmark
Retailers large and small are yanking Danish products off store shelves and some are even seeing a boost in business after voicing their support of the boycott

By Andrew Bossone

This year’s Gulf Food, Hotel and Equipment Exhibition was supposed to be one of many relatively uneventful trade fairs in Dubai. But the largest food show in the Middle East, held from February 19-22, became an important meeting place for distributors and manufacturers who stand to lose millions of dollars in a widespread boycott of Danish products. Muslim consumers are outraged by cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) published in the provincial Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Khaled Khoshella, a wholesaler in Cairo, traveled to the Emirates to meet his suppliers in the hope of saving nearly $500,000 worth of cheese that nobody in Egypt will buy.

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April 2006
Competition Brewing
Three Starbucks coffee shops are now hiring,but will LE 30 drinks fly off the espresso machine?

By Andrew Bossone

Infamous coffee chain Starbucks should be opening stores in Egypt by the end of the year, according to information obtained from a recruitment agency hiring retail employees in Alexandria, Cairo and Sharm El-Sheikh reached after it placed an advertisement in Al-Waseet on Friday, March 24.

The company’s international office has yet to make a formal announcement, but the recruiting firm Resource Professionals, hired by M.H. Alshaya, the Starbucks franchisee in the Middle East, confirmed that 14 applicants have signed contracts to work in a new store in Alexandria. Ten more potential employees have been given offers for the store in Cairo, which will have eight baristas, one assistant manager and one manager, but they haven’t signed yet.

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March 2006
Metro Lite
Mansour Group plans to open new outlets offering Metro quality at discount prices

By Andrew Bossone

Fast-moving consumer goods titan Mansour Group is planning to launch a new chain of discount markets called Kheer Zaman (literally: “The Goodness of the Past,” but we like “The Good Old Days”) in May.

The decision marks a significant strategic move for the group, whose Metro markets have attracted high-income Egyptian and expatriate consumers.

“With Metro, we are serving the A and B customers, while the C and D customers are the majority nationwide,” says Mohanad Adly, managing director of Metro.

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June 2006
WEF, Intel, Nortel, MCIT Bring Tech to Classrooms
Intel, with support from Nortel, is teaming up with MCIT and the Ministry of Education to bring technology to classrooms at every level.

By Andrew Bossone

Intel Corporation recently announced the launch of the META (Middle East, Turkey, and Africa) Higher Education Initiative in Egypt to focus on bringing technology to the nation’s universities.

Cairo University, Alexandria University, Ain Shams University and the American University in Cairo signed on to the initiative with support from the World Economic Forum, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

“The first item of achieving quality in education we see is connectivity to the internet, giving students access to internet, having them use computers and software. Incorporating its elements in the curriculum is very effective now,” Minister of Education Yousry El-Gamal said at a recent press conference.

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May 2006
Apple Branches Out
Apple Computer’s strongest marketing tool — its hip retail boutique — lands in Cairo

By Andrew Bossone

In the recent expansion of upscale retail locations at malls and boutiques in five-star hotels, one thing was missing until last month — a large glowing Apple with a bite taken out of it.

In addition to aggressive restyling of its hardware and the immense popularity of the iPod, analysts credit Apple Computer’s decision to open its own retail locations with pumping new life into the company in the late 1990s. The ultra-chic stores not only cut out the middleman for Apple, they have become one of its best marketing tools.

Although Apple has not franchised the model in the United States, it appears to be allowing its independent marketing centers (IMCs) abroad to license the business model and appearance of the ‘Apple Stores’ to official distributors.

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August 2006
On the Wire
As Egypt continues to roll out the new one-pound coins, some are thinking to the next step: an economy with almost no cash at all

By Andrew Bossone

Imagine a world without cash. No more rummaging through your wallet for dirty money. No more waiting in line for hours to pay your telephone bill. Every financial transaction occurs electronically. This is the dream of Giro-Nil, a partnership between industry giants CIB (bt100 number 13), Banque Misr, Egypt Post and the Dutch company inClusion Group.

The paperwork in today’s cash economy can be exhausting, says Ulbe Spaans, managing director of Giro-Nil. “Look at electricity — look at an electricity bill every month. Gas — every month. Telephone. Salary payment is a transaction too, it’s an incoming transaction,” Spaans says. “Then you pay rent, you have insurance, you might have installments on a car. So you could have a minimum of seven transactions per month. That’s 84 transactions per year, times 20 million people. That is a lot of transactions.”

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March 2006
Wheels for a Deal
With the mid-sized car market doubling last year thanks to lower tariffs, Egyptian car makers have the legroom on their balance sheets to invest in local production of luxury cars and SUVs

By Andrew Bossone

Luxury automobile dealers shifted into high gear in 2005: Thanks to import tariff reductions imposed in September 2004, some of the biggest names in the business have been able to sell imported models at much more modest prices, and the increased cash flow has provided the base to begin local production of larger models still in the expensive customs bracket.

Production is starting this year on two models in a category that has taken the West by storm and that manufacturers figure will be as eagerly received here: sport utility vehicles (SUVs).

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March 2006
Smart, Smarter and Smartest
Cairo ICT showcased a new low-cost, all-inclusive computer and a phone that will alert you to prayer times, even when you’re roaming

By Andrew Bossone

To see how the Cairo Information, Communication, and Technology Exhibition and Conference (ICT) has expanded since its inception a decade ago, one need only walk through the large hall that houses the heart of the event at the Cairo International Conference Center. Elaborate booths with company logos tower over pedestrians making their way through the maze of technology professionals. Cisco Systems brought in a classical music group to play as attendees sipped espresso at a nearby coffee stand.

According to Osama Kamal, the gregarious event organizer, ICT used to take up 4,500 square meters; now it sprawls over 19,000, with annual advertising growing by 15%.

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April 2006
Fly The Orascom Skies?
With lavish resorts sprouting across the region, the Sawiris’ tourism arm, Orascom Hotels and Development, now wants to drive demand by launching charter flights on neglected routes from Greece, Turkey and Lebanon to Egypt and other Arab countries

By Andrew Bossone

While stunt planes performed aerial acrobatics in the skies above the second annual AVEX conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, the business stunts were pulled off by regional and domestic airline partnerships led by Orascom Hotel Developments (OHD) looking to draw more visitors to holiday resorts from Europe and the Gulf.

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April 2006
Seal of Approval
Xceed is the first regional call center to receive COPC certification,the international industry standard of quality

By Andrew Bossone

Looking down the aisles of Xceed’s telephone call center, CEO Adel Danish sees his staff of young workers as the pioneers of outsourcing in Egypt, and he has an extra reason to smile these days: Xceed has just become the first company in Africa and the Middle East to receive accreditation from the Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC), and Danish attributes the achievement wholly to his employees, whose abilities critics once doubted.

“What makes me really proud and happy is this victory over a perceived idea about the young Egyptian labor force — that they’re just lazy, cheap and inefficient, [only] good at making T-shirts and shoes,” he says.

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September 2006
The Miracle of Modern Retailing?
Unfazed by the nation’s spotty track record with foreign food retailers, Spinneys has opened its first store. How does the Dubai-based retail chain plan to avoid its predecessors’ pitfalls?

By Andrew Bossone

Sainsbury’s failed miserably, and Shoprite lost millions, but that hasn’t deterred Dubai-based Spinneys from setting up shop in Egypt: In June, the chain opened the nation’s newest hypermarket in Heliopolis’ upscale CityStars mall.

Egypt’s isn’t exactly a new market for the food retailer, though: The brand name was actually born here when Arthur Rawdon Spinney sold his first bag of groceries in Alexandria back in 1924. More than 80 years later, Michael Wright, managing director of Spinneys Holdings, sat down with Business Today Egypt for an exclusive interview on Spinneys approach to retailing. And while that approach may be informed by state-of-the art integrated retail systems at all of its outlets, to Wright success is still all about “Location, location, location.”

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Nation In Brief
August 2006
Gas and Metro Price Hikes Hit Home

By Andrew Bossone

Drivers were shocked at the pumps last month as the government raised the price of gasoline and diesel by 30% and 25%, respectively, on July 20. The consumer cost of gasoline had not risen since 1993, although the state phased out gasoline grades below 90 octane in an effective price hike last year.

Analysts have warned the price increase will have widespread inflationary effects: “Gas prices [affect] every commodity. Transportation costs are connected to inflation, so you will have a rise in each commodity,” says Magdy Sobhy, senior economist at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

The late-July increase, timed before the Revolution Day holiday long weekend, bumped the price of 90-octane fuel, the most commonly used gas for passenger cars, from LE 1 to LE 1.30 per liter. Diesel, consumed primarily by buses and trucks, rose from LE 0.60 per liter to LE 0.75.

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August 2006
A Firm Foundation
Laila Iskandar and her Community and Institutional Development group (CID) took home the Schwab Foundation’s honor for Social Entrepreneur of the Year in Egypt. We look at how she and her fellow nominees are setting out to change the economy as we understand it today.

By Andrew Bossone

We can’t all be Warren Buffett: The 75-year-old billionaire recently announced that he would donate $37 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which works to alleviate disease and poverty in developing countries. But that doesn’t mean that we turn a blind eye to the world’s problems: Sometimes, the most seemingly mundane of objects can spark great opportunities for change.

For Laila Iskandar, founder and managing director of the Community and Institutional Development group (CID), that opportunity came in the form of an empty shampoo bottle. Multinational cosmetic companies were frustrated that empty bottles of their products were being filled with bogus material, then resold as the real thing with the labels still intact.

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Nation In Brief
November 2006
Marico Eyes More Buys in Egypt

By Andrew Bossone


After acquiring the Egyptian haircare brand Fiancée in September, India-based Marico Industries is hungry for more. The company was scanning the Egyptian market for more acquisitions in October; this time Marico is looking closely at the beauty and wellness segments. Marico may also examine rationalizing the Fiancée portfolio, company officials said last month.

A source close to Marico said the group was already in talks for other brand acquisitions. Marico, like others in its industry, prefers to purchase brands rather than entire companies.

Also last month, Marico appointed Brajesh Bajpai, a former executive of Frito-Lay India, as the Cairo-based country director of Marico Egypt. Marico might also make Egypt the hub for its expansion into other African markets.

Indian Tea Imports Rise

Imports of Indian tea surged after Egypt slashed duties on non-African imports at the start of this year in the wake of a concerted lobbying campaign by Indian officials, almost leveling the playing field with major producer Kenya.

India, the world’s largest producer and consumer of tea, exported 70,000 kilograms of the commodity to Egypt last year. In the first half of 2006 alone, India shipped 1 million kilograms of tea into Egypt.

Indian officials hope to see that figure grow to 10 million kilograms over the coming years.

India is a major producer of Egypt’s most commonly used tea, known in the industry as CTC (cut, tear, and curl), which is machine-chopped into small uniform pieces as opposed to being gently rolled for 1-3 hours in a machine to bruise, crush or thereby release the leaf’s juices and chemicals.

Duties on non-African teas were cut to only 5%, giving Indian imports as fair a chance as those from Kenya and other African-COMESA countries, which enter the nation duty-free under the COMESA trade liberalization pact.

India exported 15.91 million kilograms of tea worldwide through August, a 6.63% rise over the same period of 2005, when it shipped off 14.92 million kilograms. The subcontinent’s tea production stood 7.11% higher in August compared to the year before at 120.4 million kilograms.

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December 2006
Terminal Conundrum?
Two international companies are each claiming responsibility for key areas of Cairo International Airport’s Terminal 3

By Andrew Bossone

No more waiting for three hours at the airport, no more pushing and shoving through the check-in counter line and no more sitting amid swelling crowds at the airline offices. Well, hopefully.

Cairo International Airport will be one of the most technologically advanced facilities in the region when the new Terminal 3 is complete, but there seems to be some confusion about who will do the work. From the parking lot to the boarding ramps, the Terminal will have the latest in airport equipment, but the contractor in charge is a bit of an ambiguous issue.

For the moment, at least.

Two contractors are currently claiming responsibility for key areas of Cairo’s high-tech Terminal 3, according to exclusive interviews given to Business Today Egypt by TAV Airports Holding Company, the Turkish contractor at Terminal 3, and ARINC Managed Services (AMS), the American airport-technology company that won a $22 million bid last month to provide computer and communications systems for the new terminal.

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