Egypt and the World on the Threshold of New Millennium

 Dr. Mahmoud Abdel Fadeel

The book reviews a number of topics, the most important of which are the Egyptian economy in the 21st century and the problems facing Egypt in transition from the economic reform to the economic development.

The World Between Knowledge Gap and E-Commerce

The gap between the developed and developing countries is no longer a gap of resources rather than a gap of knowledge resulting from the information technology revolution.

The advanced industrial world has witnessed three technological waves that led to upheavals in the production techniques.

The IT revolution led to significant changes in the types of trade exchange and marketing which helped increase the volume of E-commerce during the last few years.

Egyptian Economy in the 21st Century

The Egyptian economy is needed to adopt a long-term mechanism to overcome challenges facing it, and thus turning it into a dynamic economy. The main pre-requisites of the long-term mechanism needed for the Egyptian economy are as follows:

1- Defining the most important sectors for the national economy for realizing development and structural change in the framework of production and exports.
2- Focusing on achieving food and grains self-sufficiency.
3- Focusing on implementing the mega-national projects, such as Toshka Valley project, for realizing development to the Egyptian people.

4- Raising the Egyptian standards of living and working on satisfying the basic needs particularly in the education and health sectors.
5- Balancing the role of the public and private sectors and adopting structural reform programmes as part of the long-term national development programmes.

Growth and Development

The types of growth and development, particularly the types of investment, education, workforce, and exports, must receive much care, as they are considered main criteria for judging the progress of any economy. In general, we have to judge the efficiency and progress of the Egyptian economy through the following:

1-Rates of growth in the added value in the sectors of industry, agriculture and services.
2-Rates of growth in the hi-tech exports.
3-Rates of accumulating human and information capitals.
4-Indicators of growth in the research and development sector.

Turning from Economic Reform into Economic Development

Adopting economic reform programmes does not guarantee either achieving economic growth, activating investment, solving the problem of unemployment or increasing exports. So, a structural vision should be adopted.

For realizing such an end, we have to shed light on problems facing turning from the reform phase to the phase of continuous growth. These problems are as follows:

1-Mobilizing the liquid savings and necessity to direct them towards productive investment channels.

2- Adoption of the local and foreign investors of the policy of wait-and-see via employing their money in activities of financial and constructional speculations, which threatens the future of the national economy.

3-Privatization programmes: the development process requires developing the role of the private sector in pushing the development process forward. This can be realized by privatizing the management systems of the public sector companies.

4- The need to fairly distribute the country's resources among all sects of the society.

Reconstruction and Change

In the 1990s, Egypt adopted the policy of economic reform and the initiation of the mega-national projects. While in the coming few years, Egypt is expected to make a stride in all economic, social, political and cultural fields.

For realizing this end, the coming period must be considered as the phase of change and development. The main traits of this phase are as follows:

1- The institutional reform within the same institutions and in the inter-relations.
2- Adopting a new economic policy that helps increase the rates of local savings, in addition to adopting a new policy for distributing investments among the various productive sectors and achieving a leap in the exportation of goods and services.
3- Adopting a new system of science and technology.
4- Achieving social security among the different strata in the society.
5- Adopting a new policy for diffusing democracy among all Egyptians.

Egypt and the Future

There is a dire need to fairly distribute the fruits of development among the different strata in the Egyptian society for avoiding political and social crises resulting from the inequality of distributing them.