What are the major advantages of investment in Egypt in recent years?
The advantages are as follows:
First, Egypt owns unique location advantages. It spans Asia and Africa, faces Europe in the north across the Mediterranean Sea, and the southwest directly connects to the hinterland of the African continent. The Suez Canal is the shipping lifeline connecting Europe and Asia, which ascribes an extremely important strategic position to it. In addition, Egypt has shipping and air lanes linked with European, Asian and African countries, as well as land transportation network connected with neighboring African countries, which provide it with convenient transportation and superior geographical location.
Second, Egypt has excellent international trade conditions. Egypt joined the World Trade Organization in 1995 and actively participated in various multilateral and bilateral trade agreements. The regional trade agreements that have been joined include: Egypt-EU Partnership Agreement, the Greater Arab Free Trade Area Agreement, the African Free Trade Area Agreement, (the United States, Egypt, Israel) Qualified Industrial Zone Agreement, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Agreement of Egypt-Turkey Free Trade Area and so on. According to these agreements, most of Egypt's products exporting to countries in the agreement area enjoy the free trade policy of zero-tariff.
Third, Egypt has sufficient human resources. As of May 2020, Egypt has a population of over 100 million, which made it the largest population in the Middle East and the third largest population in Africa. So it has abundant labor resources, with 52.4% of the population under the age of 25 (June 2017) and 28.95 million (December 2019). Low-end labor force and high-end labor force coexist in Egypt, thus the overall wage level is very competitive in the Middle East and the Mediterranean coastal areas. The popularizing rate of English in young Egyptians is relatively high, and there is a considerable number of technical and managerial talents with higher education with more than 300000 new university graduates each year.
Fourth, there are abundant natural resources. Egypt has a large number of undeveloped wasteland at a low price, and the underdeveloped areas such as Upper Egypt even provide industrial land for free. Oil and gas resources have been discovered constantly. After the largest Zuhal Gas Field in the Mediterranean is put into production, Egypt has once again realized natural gas export. In addition, it also has rich mineral resources such as phosphate, iron ore, quartz ore, marble, limestone, gold deposit and so on.
Fifth, Egypt’s domestic market is full of potential. Egypt is the third largest economy and the third populous country in Africa, with strong national awareness of consumption and large domestic market. At the same time, the polarization of consumption structure is serious. Though a large number of low-income people are in the stage of basic life consumption, a considerable number of high-income people have entered the stage of enjoyment consumption. According to Global Competitiveness Report 2019 from World Economic Forum, Egypt ranked 23rd in the 141 countries and regions with the most competitive power in the world, ranking 23rd in the index of "market scale" which is the first in the Middle East and Africa.
Sixth, infrastructure is relatively perfect in Egypt. It has a road network of nearly 180000 km, which basically connects the country's most urban and rural areas, and the road mileage newly added 3000 km in 2018. There are 10 international airports in Egypt, and Cairo Airport is the second largest airport in Africa. Also, Egypt has 15 commercial ports, 155 berths and an annual cargo handling capacity of 243 million tons. In addition, it has more than 56.55 million kW (June 2019) installed capacity, with the power generation capacity ranking the first in Africa and the Middle East, and achieving considerable power surplus and export. On the whole, although infrastructure in Egypt is facing problems of ageing, it is still relatively sound in terms of the whole Africa.
