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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters High expectations for Toshka
TOSHKA, Egypt's mega-project for the cultivation of produce, is expected to create 60,000 job opportunities, said Ahmed Goueili, seretary-general of the Council for Arab Economic Unity and chairman of the Kingdom Agricultural Development Company, which is owned by Saudi investor Prince Al-Walid bin Talal. Goueili highlighted 2004 as the target date for the first harvest of grapes under the project.These optimistic projections were announced at a colloquium last week entitled "Toshka: The Challenge of the 21st Century," organised by the American University in Cairo and co-sponsored by Arthur Anderson's Middle East division.
Toshka, located in the New Valley in southern Egypt, is a project initiated by the government to attract foreign investment to the country's agriculture sector.
The location of this project, according to Goueili, was chosen due to its proximity to Abu Simbel Airport, which facilitates export of produce, and the high fertility of the area's soil.
The main topics dealt with in the colloquium were discussion of plans for the provision of water to the project through the year 2017, the comprehensive development of the area, increasing investment by the private sector and encouraging people to relocate to the area. Concerning investment in the project, Minister of Public Works and Water Resources Mahmoud Abu Zeid said its entire budget is LE6.7 billion of which the state's share is five per cent.
Plans for the project stipulate that 3.4 million feddans should be under cultivation by 2017, said Abu-Zeid. Already 540,000 feddans have been planted, he added.
Other colloquium speakers were Dia El-Din Ahmed El-Quosi, general director of Toshka projects and Fouad M. Alaeddin, Arthur Anderson's managing partner for the Middle East.
New industrial agreement
MINISTER of Industry and Technological Development Mustafa El-Rifa'i recently attended the signing of a cooperation agreement between the Egyptian Technology Company for Chemical Industries, (Tecno Paint), of Sixth of October City and the German company BASF.According to El-Rifa'i, "Tecno Paint has acquired technically advanced know-how for the production of paints for the automotive refinishing market, in which BASF is a world leader."
The Private Sector Development Programme (PSDP), through which the European Commission provides technical assistance and support for Egyptian industry, facilitated the agreement for this technology transfer project in which BASF is investing LE75 million.
El-Rifa'i said that technological development is essential to insuring high quality products. "We are constantly working with private sector companies to encourage them to participate in the programmes which aim at developing the technology used in their projects," he said.
El-Rifa'i added that 141 industrial projects will be inaugurated in Sixth of October City during the next few months. "Investments in these projects will amount to LE1.7 billion and they [the projects] are expected to employ more than 10,000 unemployed youth," he said.
Currently there are 557 industrial projects operating in Sixth of October City in which LE8 billion has been invested. These projects produce an estimated LE15 billion annually and employ 47,000 people.
Arabic online
INTERNATIONALISED-DOMAIN Name System (I-DNS.net) has announced that it will provide key enabling multilingual technology to Egypt's Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC), to allow the registration of names in Arabic in the <.eg> domain name space.This agreement will make Egypt the first country in the Middle East to use Arabic Web addresses. Raafat Radwan, head of IDSC, praised this initiative saying that it will make Web browsing much easier and contribute to increasing the number of Egyptians using the Internet.
Currently, users of Internet Egypt and Link Egypt, which entered into a partnership with I-DNS in May, are already able to register Web addresses ending in <.com>, <.net> and <.org> in Arabic.
