Al Masry Al Youm Daily in the past two days revealed that the Egyptian government has sold thousands of acres at Toshka to Al Waild Bin Talal for a very cheap price.
It turned out that during El-Ganzoury's cabinet Prince Al Walid bought 100,000 acres for LE 50 per acre "less than $10" while the per acre land price there is LE20,000 !! The richest man in the world has bought 100,000 acres in Toshka for LE 5,000,000. Not that only but also the government gave him additional 128,000 acres for free as a buffer zone to protect his land !!
Of course this is besides tax exemption and reduced rates of water and electricity not to mention the right to own the land after paying the complete price which is only LE5,000,000 !! What is LE 5,000,000 compared to the fortune of Al Walid !!??
I understand that the reduced price and rates are incentives to encourage the investors to invest in Toshka but the question here : what has the richest man in earth done with this land ?
Well my dear readers Al Walid has reclaimed only 800 acres from the 280,000 acres he owns up till now !!
The Egyptian government of course can't take back the land from Al Walid due to the stupid contract it signed. It is just like the Wagih Saig's case !!
Unlike other people I believe that the Toshka project is not complete fiasco , it is the regime's fiasco. This regime could have used this huge project to unite the people as some sort of new national project like the Aswan High Dam construction. This project was doomed because the decision makers did not want it to succeed , in fact I do not know what they did want exactly. The Toshka project was doomed because a project like this can't succeed in the corruption we have in Egypt now. National projects need sincerity which our current regime is not lucky enough to have it.
There should have been a penalty clause that states that if the whole land is not reclaimed with some time period, the land goes back to the government or some huge fine be imposed. Yes huge so that party #2 takes the matter seriously. That's to get them moving instead of sitting on their laurels. I expect the whole contract, with its extremely liberal clauses, was written to encourage the reclaiming of the land knowing that the government did a big 'sacrifice'.
ReplyDeleteSecond, what's with the clause that any disputes to be resolved in an international court? Doesn't the government have any authority to resolve disputes about its own land!? Did someone twist the government to agree to this contract to sell the land, water and electricity for peanuts and to exempt ALL taxes & fees!? So that was done in 1998 and it's 2010 today. What has happened to the land all these years?
This contract should anger the public with all the concessions. Why favor a foreigner but the Egyptians.