Accounting for 12% of all global trade and 30% of international container traffic in 2020, the Suez Canal is vital to countries in Asia and Europe, according to Freightify, a platform for freight forwarders. “The Suez Canal is also a key regional shipping hub for oil and hydrocarbons from Asia and the Middle East to Europe,” the company said in a 2022 blog. It is “responsible for transporting about 8% of the world’s oil and 8% of liquified natural gas.” Not content with those impressive figures, the government wants to increase revenue from the 193-kilometer waterway by raising the number…
Author: Tamer Hafez
Climate change, GDP growth prospects, and awareness of environmental and sustainability issues are redefining tourists’ expectations worldwide. “Several emerging trends are shaping the way people approach travel in the post-pandemic era,” Adir Ron, chief marketing officer for Duve, a tech solutions provider to hotels, wrote in an April blog on the International Luxury Hotel Association website. “These trends are reshaping the travel industry and providing exciting opportunities for both travelers and the travel industry alike.” Facilities targeting tourists, such as hotels and developments serving leisure travelers, are responding to those changing needs. In February, Michael Parker, co-founder and CEO of…
Since COVID-19 started, Egypt, like many middle-income developing countries, has suffered from soaring inflation and public debt, local currency depreciation, and mounting pressure to implement structural reforms in exchange for financing. Central bank (CBE) data shows that Egypt has witnessed inflation rise to four-decade highs, the pound has devalued to unprecedented lows, and external debt has increased nearly 40% since January 2020. Conventionally, the government has sought assistance from the United States, EU, and multilateral international financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and EBRD to secure a significant portion of its dollar needs. Their approval came with an added…
One outcome of China’s urban household disposable income per capita increasing by 480% from 2003 to 2023, as per data aggregator Trading Economics, is that more Chinese than ever can afford to travel abroad. A 2018 note from Fliggy, an online travel agency owned by Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group, said, “The wealthy, the middle class, the young, the old — everyone is heading abroad.” In 2019, just before COVID-19 lockdowns, “Mainland China had the largest outbound travel market in the world, both in number of trips and total spent,” said Guang Chen, a partner at McKinsey & Company’s Hong…
For Egypt, tourism has long been a major source of foreign currency. The Central Bank (CBE) said that in 2022, the tourism sector brought in more dollars ($12.2 billion) than FDI ($6.7 billion) or the Suez Canal ($8 billion). According to the CBE, last year the sector was the fastest-growing source of foreign currency (up 37% compared to 2021), outpacing the Suez Canal (up 26.9%), exports (up 18.2%), remittances (dropped 10%) and FDI (down 72.7%). Tourism’s growth trajectory continues in 2023. Amr El Kady, CEO of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board, a government body, told CNBC in May that tourist numbers…
For companies, the pandemic was a watershed moment, changing how they operate “by leaps and bounds compared to five years ago,” said an Ernst & Young (EY) report published in July on “Reimagining Tax Functions” in emerging markets. “What seemed to be a forced adaptation to alternate ways of working is now a reality and opens opportunities that organizations wish to realize.” Companies in developing markets are eager to implement such change. Almost 57% of respondents to the attached EY survey said they “are welcoming this change.” An integral part of the adaptation process is ensuring a company’s tax functions cope with…
The government has been on a mission to update Egyptian Tax Authority (ETA) operations to meet international business-related standards. “We have always had plans to improve our interaction with all taxpayers in Egypt,” said Atef Hamdy, head of ETA’s Joint Stock Companies Tax Office, at an AmCham Egypt meeting in March. “This time, our goal is to meet international benchmarks in advanced economies.” That target would come by making ETA an entirely digitized authority when dealing with taxpayers, audits, and tax-related submissions. “Such automation will benefit everyone,” said Hamdy. “Taxpayers could access all our services from anywhere, though we still…
Having 17 agencies regulating food safety in Egypt has made the sector a “mess,” Sharkawy & Sarhan Law Firm said in a March 2017 note. That changed in January 2018 when the National Food Safety Authority (NFSA) started operating. “All 17 food-related agencies … merged under the NFSA,” authority Chairman Tarek El Houby told AmCham Egypt members at a February committee meeting. “We currently have 58 branches, plus 18 at border towns across Egypt.” Its mandate is to ensure that imported and locally sourced foods sold in Egypt are safe for human consumption. That is no small task, as the…
Since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine started early last year, governments, producers, and traders have scrambled to ensure uninterrupted food supplies from new sellers. World’s Insights Network, a think tank, says that is because Russia and Ukraine supply 30% of the world’s wheat, 60% of sunflower oil, and 20% of corn. As a result, nations had to compromise on some import procedures and standards to avoid supply disruptions in the short term. For example, the European Parliamentary Research Service said in April 2022 that FoodDrinkEurope, a private-sector association, was calling for temporary flexibility on food labeling and official controls…
Africa is laden with untapped economic potential and opportunities, “the last frontier for global growth,” wrote Colin Coleman, a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former CEO of Goldman Sachs in Sub-Saharan Africa, in a February 2020 blog on Project Syndicate. It “can emulate China’s rapid rise of the past 50 years.” A central challenge preventing Africa from realizing its potential is that local and international narratives surrounding the continent’s politics, economy, and society are “dangerously distorted,” noted an African Union (AU) report titled “The Business in Africa Narrative Report” in February. “Very few…