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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 April - 3 May 2000 Issue No. 479 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 April - 3 May 2000 Issue No. 479
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters One stop shopping
By Eman Youssef
If construction activity is anything to go by, the slump in the takings of high street retailers is failing to dampen investors' taste for shopping malls.
When El-Yamama Centre, Cairo's first mall, was built over ten years ago, it cost LE100 million. Now, a minimum investment of LE300 million is necessary for such projects. Yet still they are being constructed apace.
"First Mall" -- the most recent shopping complex to open -- rents space by the metre to retailers seeking access to an exclusively middle class clientele. And while renting space in a mall may appear expensive -- a square metre, on average, costs LE30 a month, there are savings to be made on maintenance costs.
"Egypt has yet to see malls catering to limited income groups," says Federation of Chambers of Commerce member Youssef Abu El-Hagag. "What we really need is to see more of this kind of shopping pattern making goods available at accessible prices in, for instance, the new communities."
Cairo's malls, for now at least, though, seem intent on catering only to those with large disposable incomes. And one result is that they have had an inflationary impact on surrounding real estate prices. A case in point is the Shubra Corniche where the existence of the World Trade Center, and the construction of a number of residential up-market apartment blocks and hotels, has forced real estate prices in this once popular district to around LE2500 per square metre.
