June News

Egypt Daily News, 2 June 2010--Exporters say that an ongoing dispute between the Egyptian government and Dubai World, the company which runs the port of Ain Sokhna, has resulted in a halt on cargo exports for more than a month, with freight piling up at the seaport and exporters and importers incurring huge losses, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported.
Mohsen Ahmed, general director of customs at Ain Sokhna, said however that work in the port continues with no stoppages. He said incoming goods are being released normally, and denied there was any dispute with the government.
Dubai World also dismissed the allegations.

 

Al Ahram Weekly 27 May -2 June--Expenditure on subsidies, particularly on energy and food, is eating up a considerable portion of the state budget. The latest arguments on whether the government should switch to cash subsidies instead of the existing system based on subsidy in kind has awakened fears that the government might be slowly but surely withdrawing its subsidy system at large. A study released in March by the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC) about the state of the poor in Egypt revealed that 78 per cent of the poor in Egypt are concentrated in rural areas and that the poverty rate has increased to 21.5 per cent in 2009 compared to 19 per cent in previous years. Egypt does not come on top of the list of Arab countries in providing subsidies. Syria and Jordan are two economies of a smaller scale than Egypt, and they come at the forefront of Arab countries providing subsidies with 2.1 per cent and 1.8 per cent of their GDP respectively, followed by Egypt with 1.3 per cent of GDP."