On his first official day as chairperson of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone), Mohab Mamish held a meeting on Saturday with the SCZone’s board of directors to discuss the zone’s plan during the next period.
Mamish, who is also the chairperson of the Suez Canal Authority, held a meeting with the ministers of investment and petroleum; the senior vice president and managing director of Middle East and Africa at DP World Limited, Suhail Al Banna; and the managing director of Sonker company, Osama al-Sherif, to resolve their dispute and announce a new date to finish establishment of the liquids pouring station at Sokhna seaport, by October 2018.
However, the former dean of Economics and Political Science College at Cairo University, Aliaa El-Mahdy, said that she does not know why the government decided to put him in charge of the SCZone besides his position as chairperson of the Suez Canal Authority, adding that holding two such important positions would affect his efficiency as he would be burdened with too many responsibilities.
Furthermore, she stated that the government has yet to announce what the goals of the SCZone and its targets are.
She said that dismissing Ahmed Darwish, the former chairperson of the SCZone, happened with a severe lack of transparency and not because of any mistake made by him.
El-Mahdy said that the government is tardy “as usual” in establishing SCZone’s projects, adding that providing land plots for investors could have happened during the establishment of the New Suez Canal back in 2014.
