Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Sahar Nasr, is coordinating with Assem El-Gazzar, Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities, to provide a clear database of real estate lands to be available on the recently launched investment map of industrial lands.
During the Future Cities of Egypt Conference held on Sunday, Nasr emphasised that the coordination comes within the framework of promoting the real estate sector and the availability of lands online, especially as the construction sector is one of the most developed sectors in Egypt and contributes significantly to the Egyptian economy.
Nasr added that this sector is one of the sectors that the ministry was keen to facilitate its procedures and issue incentive legislations for it, as part of the state’s plan to redraw the economic and development map in Egypt.
Nasr pointed out that the ministry is also working to solve problems facing investors in this sector through a customer service centre at the ministry in tandem with the government working to establish interconnection networks and modern road networks.
For his part, Assm El-Gazzar said, “40% of Egypt’s area is eligible for urban development but the challenge is these areas is that they are too far from main resources like energy, water, and infrastructure. These sorts of things require huge amounts of money before connecting with basic utilities.
El-Gazzar pointed out that doubling Egypt’s urban area from 6% to 14% currently means a very large development volume, noting that the volume of investments that were pumped in New Nasser City, (West Assiut), amounted to EGP 7bn within 18 months, which is more than what was pumped into cities that have been on the ground for a while now.
Meanwhile, Khaled Abbas deputy Minister Housing for National Projects said that the most prominent challenges facing Egypt currently is the continuous population increase with a total of 3 million citizens annually. This proves to be the biggest challenge for any government trying to provide urban expansion for a quickly growing population. This challenge has prompted the government with all its ministries to put the National Strategic plan 2052.
In implementation of this plan, there are 4 axes that the state is working on, namely, providing social housing for citizens with affordable prices, developing road infrastructure, developing informal areas and slum, and establishing fourth-generation cities and implementing a network of strong infrastructure that accommodates the scale of large development and implementation of comprehensive urban communities, including the New Administrative Capital, New Alamein, and New Mansoura.
Secretary-General of the Union of Arab Chambers Khaled Hanafi , said that the initiative of the Central Bank of Egypt, which he launched recently to provide EGP 50bn for the real estate sector, will contribute to the growth and stimulation of real estate investments in Egypt during the coming period as well as attracting investments in this field.
Furthermore, Head of the Egyptian European Business Council Mohamed Abou El-Enein elaborated that specialised industrial cities are the key to development during the next stage, and they are the reason for the rise of the economy in many countries such as China, Malaysia and the United States of America.
