22 - 28 March 2001
Issue No.526
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 22 - 28 March 2001 Issue No.526 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Reducing dependence on cash
The world is experiencing significant transformations in the domain of Information Technology (IT). We must work hard to benefit from these changes particularly in light of the huge gap between us and the developed countries in this area.
For example, the teledensity in 1998 in Egypt reached 0.06 telephone lines per person against 0.661 in the United States. In the past two years, Egypt increased this figure to 0.110 lines. However, we still have a long way to go. As for the number of computer users, this reached 495 for every 1,000 persons in the US in 1998 against only 6 to 1,000 in Egypt. Furthermore, Internet usage in Egypt in 1999 was under 1 per cent of the population -- something which has implications for electronic commerce.
Added to the lack of dissemination of the technology necessary for e-commerce, the gap between us and developed countries is even wider since we do not have necessary financial and legal infrastructure needed to support this domain.
To deal with this situation, the Egyptian government has initiated a campaign to reduce dependence on cash by advocating the use of different types of payment cards. These include debit cards, which are linked to a current bank account from which money spent on the card is deducted, as well as credit cards. This initiative is expected to increase the number of card holders to 6 million by the year 2005 -- a goal that is more realistic, as far as Egypt's legal and financial infrastructure is concerned, than striving towards becoming a "cashless society.
" Ra'afat Radwan, head of the Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Centre, addressing a conference titled "Banks and Enhancing the Means of Electronic Payments."
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