Briefs

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All in one basket

A NUMBER of vital financial agencies will come under one umbrella as of 1 July with the creation of the General Authority for Financial Supervision that was recently established under Law 10/2009 by presidential decree.

The new authority will supervise and regulate all non-banking financial markets and oversee the capital market, stock exchange, insurance services, mortgage finance, and financial leasing in order to standardise policies, rules and procedures governing work in the non-banking financial sector.

This single body will oversee the financial control of all non-banking financial activities and develop and maximise their competitiveness to attract more domestic and foreign investment, and will work to reduce deficiencies of coordination and to address problems that result from different methods of control.

The new body has replaced the Capital Market Authority, the General Authority for Real Estate Financing, and the Egyptian Authority for Supervision of Insurance. It will be chaired by Ziad Bahaaeddin, former chairman of the General Authority for Investment. The authority will have an independent budget and will be supervised by the Central Audit Agency.

Dispute settled

A 25-YEAR tax dispute between the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and the Egyptian Tax Authority (ETA) has been settled. As such, NBE is due to pay LE1.154 billion in delayed taxes which includes LE781 million in taxes between 1980-2002 and some LE373 million for 2003-2005.

A partnership between the bank and the tax authority is also being created. ETA Chairman Ashraf El-Arabi said the NBE will be in charge of collecting payable taxes due to the authority and overdue payments to the Ministry of Finance which are estimated at LE140 billion per year.

The step comes as part of a policy adopted by the ministry to settle financial disputes through negotiations. Yesterday's enemies are friends today.

Ruling confirmed

THE EGYPTIAN Court of Cassation this week confirmed an August 2008 ruling compelling 18 cement companies to pay LE10 million for violating the anti-trust law.

The verdict was issued based on the original competition and anti trust law issued in 2005. Modification to the same law has since toughened the penalty for monopolistic practices ranging from between LE100 million to a maximum LE300 million.

Meantime, the Egyptian Competition Authority is currently revising the situation in the cement sector following a recent request by Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid following complaints that cement was being overpriced by producers.

Egypt-France cooperation

EGYPTIAN Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid, and French Minister of State for Foreign Trade Anne-Marie Idrac, announced on Sunday a joint business matchmaking event to be held next December in Cairo.

The event, the Mediterranean Forum on the Development of Enterprises (Med-Allia), announced in a meeting between the two ministers is designed to facilitate economic cooperation and partnership between Egyptian and French businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) since they account for 25 per cent of the overall economic trade between the two countries and in need for more attention.

"Med-Allia forum is a big step in reinforcing Egyptian-French ties," Rachid noted. The forum will host approximately 300 companies from both countries along with hundreds of other companies from the Mediterranean region. Med-Allia aims to organise business-to-business meetings between these companies, and it will tackle nine sectors: agri-food, consumer goods, tourism, health, ITCT/Telecom, energy/environment, building, decoration and trade.

"This forum is very important to humanitarian development, and it encourages businesses," said Idrac. The awaited forum in December is the second to take place in the region, as it was held in Tunisia in 2008.

Med-Allia is aimed to reinvigorate a long history of economic cooperation that Egypt and France share. "France has emerged as one of Egypt's biggest trade and investment partners over the past few years," Rachid said. "This can be proved in the growth in trade and investment figures of the past year despite the international economic crisis," he added. According to Rachid, economic trade with France accounts for 2.1 billion euros, and there was a 23 per cent increase in Egyptian exports to France in 2008. Total French investments in Egypt reached LE7.3 billion in 2008, making France the third-largest European country investing in Egypt.

Ministers Rachid and Idrac also discussed the impact of the global economic crisis on cooperation in the fields of trade and industry and the potential for continued growth. They also tackled the role of the Union for the Mediterranean in increasing bilateral economic relations between northern and southern Mediterranean countries.

"Egyptian exports to France have increased nowadays more than the French increase of exports to Egypt, proving continuous growth of the Egyptian economy," Idrac pointed out. "At the end I would like to say that the economic trade with Egypt has been very successful," she added.