Apr 4, 2001

Mubarak highlights importance of Private
Sector in Investment

    In a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said peoples' futures have also become so closely entangled that what affects one country affects all the others.

    Referring to Egypt’s reform policy in the last decade, and the stress under which the country’s economy has come as of late, Mubarak stressed that "our new market institutions needed to learn to adapt, to be flexible".

    "We need to learn to expand with the expanding world and to change with a changing environment ", the President said.

     Stressing the key role of the private sector in the new market-based economy, President Mubarak, added, however, that "our aim remains investment. Our vision for Egypt’s future lies in both domestic and international investments".

    "The investor in Egypt shares not only our prosperity but shares our reforms, drafts them with us, applies them with us and corrects them with us", the Egyptian leader noted.

    He referred to new oil and gas discoveries in the Mediterranean and the "new era of self-sustained growth prosperity" they usher in, saying their development was offered to the international community.

   Egyptian energy, he said, can soon power industry across the Middle East through a regional electric grid and network of gas Pipelines.

    Noting that "the foundation of our reforms lies in the global economy", Mubarak referred to different free trade agreements that Egypt had signed with Arab and East African states, as well as the partnership accord initialed last week with the European Union.

    The Egyptian leader made it clear that one of the aims of his US visit was to approach the new Administration with an offer to initiate discussions that would eventually lead to a free trade agreement.

    "We offer a doorway to Africa, to the Middle East and soon to Europe", he said.

    "Join us in building the last economic bloc of the world economy with partners across three continents, with abundant human and natural resources", he urged the Chamber members.

    Crediting the world trading system with transparency and better rules among nations, Mubarak, however, lamented the injustices it had created among countries.

    The new order of global economy, he said, is one "that has left many developing countries alienated and less able to compete and cope with the world at large. "

    He called for keeping the better parts of the system, and changing those "that do not serve all our countries. "

    The Egyptian President said his country’s commitment to the cause of reforming the global economic system stemmed from Egypt’s concern for the problems of the Third World, and its conviction that the reforms of its economy came to ease its integration into a global system that was more supportive.

    "We must join hands for progress and share the welfare of our peoples", he told the Chamber.

    Mubarak's visit to the US, which started Saturday, is the first since President George w. Bush took office in January.