Saturday, June 8, 2019

Just leave the Syrian investments alone in Egypt …for the sake of the Egyptian economy

Ramadan is over and Egyptian lawyer Samir Sabry is back to business and he has got a new target: Syrian investments in Egypt.
Samir Sabry presented a memo to Egypt’s judiciary demanding the enumeration of the Syrian investments in Egypt.
Sabry claimed that the Syrian investments in Egypt reached according to statics since the start of the “Syrian crisis” by USD 23 billion adding that they own the most important textile and garments as well as “controlling real state developments market in Egyptian neighborhood !!”
Now I do not know from where he got that number of USD 23 billion in Egypt but I know that he copycatted what was mentioned in a Pro-economic Syrian regime website word by word in February 2017 without even checking back whether it is true or wrong.
This is not the first time Sabry demands such a thing from Egyptian authorities.
He presented a memo from a year ago in May 2018 demanding the same thing from Egypt’s prosecutor general and his demand was ignored.
Thanks to Egypt and to Egyptian people and government
Thanks, Egypt banner in the famous Syrian street in October 
According to the official numbers for real, the Syrian investments increased by 30% in the first 9 months in 2018.
A report published in Al-Watan newspaper in November 2018 says that according to reports and numbers issued by the Egyptian ministry of investment and international cooperation and the ministry of industry and trade the Syrian investments in the first 9 months of 2018 reached USD 69.93 million which is equal to USD 1.2 billion.


In the first 9 months of 2018, Syrian investors established 818 companies alone in Egypt.
Already Syrian investors own 5,557 companies in Egypt in the last 48 years.
The report makes it clear that the Egyptian authorities got tough precautions and their eye wide open on those Syrian investments for the sake of National security.
I guess Sabry should calm down now.

Now I will point out here some points regarding the so-called Syrian domination of the textile and garments industry in Egypt.
Yes, a number of Syrian businessmen are focusing on the textile and garments industry in Egypt but to monopolize heavens forbid.
In fact, the Egyptian government is welcoming them and actually supports them.
In 2017, we read the news that Syrian businessmen were going to establish a Syrian industrial zone for the textile and garments industry with the support of the Egyptian government.
In 2018, current President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi visited the textile and garments factory owned by famous Syrian businessman Mohammed Kamel Sabbagh Sharabati.
Sharabati is considered one of the biggest exporters and industrialists in Syria.
He moved to Egypt in 2013 

When it comes to the real state development market, the Syrians also saved the market during the 2011-2014 years as far as I have known especially when it comes to the fact that Real state developers did not lower their prices, they used the Syrians to skyrocket their rents and prices for Egyptians, Syrians and Martians too.

Not to mention, not all the Syrian refugees had the ability to live in New Cairo or Sheikh Ziyad as some of them had to live in Cairo’s populated slum whether in Alexandria or Cairo.

By the way, as far as I could tell most of the outspoken Syrian businessmen in Egypt are close to the Al-Assad regime so accusing them of being a Muslim Brotherhood operative is extremely silly.

Interestingly what Sabry has done comes after an online campaign that targeted Syrians and their businesses in Egypt in some of the Pro-regime/nationalist/right-wing social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook for the past two weeks.
The same awful message was “Syrians go back home”
Luckily that message represented a minority as far as I could.

I do not think that Samir Sabry and the rest of those xenophobic band understand that their actions can affect the general image of Egypt as a suitable foreign direct investment environment.
Foreign direct investments do not like conspiracy theory right-wing lawyers or nationalists who can turn against them suddenly as far as I know.
In case you do not know in early April 2019, we found out that the Foreign Direct investments “FDI” declined by 26% to USD 2.8 billion in the first half of FY 2018-2019 compared to USD 3.8 billion in the first of FY2017-2018 according to the official statements of Egypt’s Central Bank.
I think in our case, we need more FDI for real and we can’t work on losing the Syrian investments now if you are serious about attracting FDI in Egypt.

This post is dedicated to all those who claimed that the Syrian community did not give back to Egypt. They gave back generously and the official numbers support them.
Samir Sabry can search for someone else to pick on.

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