We recently had breakfast with 20 top CEOs to talk about why exports and FDI are key to our economy going forward. After reading our five-step recipe for turning Egypt into a global export hub and FDI magnet, every participating CEO has agreed to answer two questions on the record.

We’ve already heard from: GSK’s Mohamed El Dababy | McKinsey’s Jalil Bensouda | Somabay’s Ibrahim El Missiri | ALC Alieldean Weshahi & Partners’ Bahaa Alieldean | HSBC Egypt’s Todd Wilcox | Actis’ Sherif El Kholy | Amazon’s Omar El Sahy | BII’s Sherine Shohdy | Mansour Automotive’s Ankush Arora | Apex’s Tom Maher | Travco’s Moataz Sedky.

Speaking to us today: Mahmoud Hassan (LinkedIn) is the co-founder of supply chain finance startup Cayesh. Hassan is also a non-executive cofounder of fintech platform D-Fin. Over the past two decades, he has spent a large portion of his career working closely with SMEs and small and medium funds, including at the International Finance Corporation and Sharaka Fund, in addition to more than a decade in consulting, including Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young.

ENTERPRISE- Which industry would you put on a focused short list — and why?

MAHMOUD HASSAN- The agriculture sector is a gold mine that we are sitting on. We need to start with primary industries where we have a competitive edge. The agri sector is a primary feeder to many industries — from food processing and manufacturing to textiles. Historically, we have the know-how and the expertise, but more advancement is needed in terms of knowledge and technology. It just needs someone to scratch the surface and get it back to where it was. Once, agriculture accounted for 16% of GDP. Now, it’s only 11.3%.

We are more advanced than neighboring agri markets like Libya, Saudi Arabia, or Sudan, so we can leverage this by becoming an export hub for these markets. We can also still produce and export our products to Southern and Eastern Europe at relatively competitive prices compared to other markets like Morocco or parts of East Asia. From a domestic perspective, agriculture is key for food security as the population increases. You'll find that low- and middle-income families spend 50-60% of their monthly budget on food.

We have the best cotton in the world: It’s a shame that it gets exported as a raw material, treated, and then re-sold to us at a much higher value. Why don't we have that knowledge and expertise to do the treatment in-house, and then export cotton as a value-added product? Another example is food oil — a tremendously fast-growing industry worldwide and very much needed.

We have the enablers: relatively cheap labor, suitable weather, and the natural geographic location. State-owned entities including the Agricultural Bank of Egypt and e-Finance have huge databases on the agricultural land bank, so we know which plots in every single corner in the country produce what crops and how we can benefit. As your five-step recipe suggests, we just need to focus on it.

I think Egypt can focus on five to eight industries in the next few years. Five is on the low end for a country with a population as large as ours; India, by comparison, started with 15 industries. The payoff will be tremendous in terms of where we'll stand and how we can position ourselves in the region.

E- Why are exports and FDI the way forward?

MH- I've worked at the IFC and the World Bank for almost eight years, so I’ve seen firsthand the economic developments in nascent and developing markets in Africa and East and South Asia. Look at how the Vietnamese economy evolved after the economic reforms that started in the 1990s. GDP multiplied by five. By 2017, the trade surplus reached almost USD 3 bn. FDI boomed from a few bn USD to double digits. It's similar in India, where FDI increased by almost 51% between 2010 and 2011. That's incredible. This is where we need to be, and why we need to enhance our economic drivers to be export-led.

It has to be private sector-led and government-backed. The Indian model, with its Invest India program, really resembles what we're doing with the Sovereign Fund of Egypt. But in India it’s private sector-led, whereas here it’s government-led. So we need to balance the role each party plays in that game.