The Israeli government is fascistic, and no peace is possible with it. The efforts for Palestinian reconciliation have stopped, and there is no plan to resume them soon. Turkey and Iran snatched the spotlight from the Arabs. The crisis of the Iraqi government is not bulging, while the threat of terror and even secession is still looming over more than one Arab country. The causes of fear, not just concern, over the Arab nation's present and future, are many. However, there is an important achievement that is not getting the media coverage it deserves, which is the economic cooperation among the countries of the region. As a matter of fact, there is an undeclared and unclear Turkish-Arab alliance, which focuses on economic matters as much as on politics. I had a long meeting in Cairo with brother Gamal Mubarak, the General Secretary of the Policy Committee in the National Democratic Party. We touched upon the issue of the relations with Syria, his views regarding the Iranian government's policies, President Mubarak's visit to Italy, the amendments to article 76 of the Egyptian Constitution for the election of the President, the Hezbollah cell and many other issues. However, all the issues I just mentioned above occupied only half of the interview's time, while the other half focused on the Egyptian economy, the cooperation among the countries of the region and the prospects for the future. Our brother Gamal is perhaps one of the best economic minds in the Arab world, and he enjoys excellent expertise in this field both locally and internationally, an expertise that he is now employing to achieve economic integration among the countries of the region. He spoke about fundamental reforms to the domestic economic systems being currently discussed in the Parliament, including reforms to customs, real estate tax and insurance law, with the aim of increasing the performance of the local economy and facilitating cooperation with neighbouring countries. Prior to the global financial crisis, economic growth stood at 7.5 percent, while it reached 4.27 percent last year. Brother Gamal predicts that in the financial year 2009-2010 (which goes from July to July), growth will be around five percent. If all goes according to plan, he expects the Egyptian economy to grow by nine to ten percent each year at a steady rate, instead of going through of a never ending cycle of growth then contraction. Egyptian exports were affected under the financial crisis and the euro situation. Nonetheless, they received a boost, helped this time by a good tourist season and increased domestic consumption. Also, the available liquidity for companies is much higher at present than during the crisis of 2000-2001, when many companies became exposed, especially to banks. The government has always been keen on creating job opportunities, and its goal is to create 3.7 million jobs in 4.5 years. Egyptian exports have increased to some European countries, and doubled with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia alone, and experts expect them to continue to increase. According to Gamal Mubarak, Egypt currently exports building materials and engineered products, including air conditioners, which Egypt used to import a few years ago, in addition to kitchen appliances, fertilizers, leather, and agricultural products to Europe. These agricultural products arrive in Greece and Italy by sea in two days. In fact, the Egyptian government guarantees a minimum load for the cargo ships, and work is underway to implement a plan to deliver agricultural exports to all the major ports in the Mediterranean within three days of departure. However, there is a problem with Africa, because there are no regular maritime shipping lines. In addition, the plan requires that the Egyptian ports capacity and facilities be upgraded. The most important facet of the regional economic integration plan will be the electric linkage among these countries, to be followed with gas and oil linkage. Electric linkage is already in place between Egypt and Jordan, while the bottom of the Red Sea is being mapped for the purpose of building an electric link with Saudi Arabia. According to brother Gamal, this project is expected to be completed in 2012 with a capacity of 1.5 MW in the beginning. In a previous lengthy report published by Al-Hayat near the end of last month, colleague Ibrahim Hamidi had mentioned Syria's ambition to become a passageway or a conduit between the four seas, i.e. the Mediterranean, the Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, and also discussed a strategic partnership between Syria and Turkey, and the cooperation councils set up with Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Syria is seeking to also link ports, airports, railways and roads, while Egypt is talking about linking electricity, gas and oil, and is hoping to reach Syria and Turkey, after Jordan, bringing everyone to the European market. In truth, my friend Dr. Abdullah Dardari, the Syrian Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, gave me as an example of this cooperation the trade with Jordan, which reached the mark of one billion dollar annually, in addition to mutual Jordanian and Syrian investments and free trade zones, whereby the Jordanians are importing goods from Europe through the port of Tartus. And if the trade volume between Jordan and Syria is one billion dollars annually, it should be in the tens of billions of dollars with Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These are great ambitions and their implementation has begun. Brother Gamal Mubarak also told me about plans to develop the Egyptian countryside, which is what I may call fighting poverty on its turf. This is because in Egypt, Syria and all the Arab countries, huge wealth is in the hands of a limited number of people, while extreme poverty is rampant among a large segment of the population. As such, the economic plans that I heard about in detail in Cairo and Damascus are great, on the condition that they benefit all the classes of the populace. [email protected]
