El Sisi to sign cooperation agreements with China next week, sits down for chat with Chinese reporters ahead of trip
El Sisi heading to China: President Abdel Fattah El Sisi is expected to sign several cooperation agreements with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during his trip to China next week, Beijing’s ambassador to Cairo Song Aiguo said yesterday, Al Borsa reports. The ambassador did not disclose the details of the agreements, but said instead that El Sisi will be giving a speech at the 2017 BRICS Summit in Xiamen, which will run from 3-5 September (Sunday through Tuesday). Chinese investors, many of whom are already in talks with Egypt over projects at the new administrative capital and the Ain Sokhna area, will welcome the speech, the ambassador said.
El Sisi also sat down for an interview yesterday with Chinese reporters ahead of his visit, according to an Ittihadiya statement. The questions were largely focused on economic cooperation with BRICS countries and Egypt’s strategy to learn from developing countries’ experiences to boost economic growth at home.
The president will then head to Hanoi, where he’ll be meeting with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and Communist Party General Secretary and Prime Minister Nguyen Phu Trong, becoming the first Egyptian president to visit the South East Asian nation, according to an Ittihadiya statement.
Meanwhile, the Investment Ministry signed an MoU with the Export–Import Bank of China that will see the latter help fund national projects for the coming three years, according to a statement from the ministry. Minister Sahar Nasr discussed cooperation on the electricity sector and electrical rail projects with the bank’s Vice President. We had said this week that the Transport Ministry was struggling to arrange the USD 500 mn it needed to fund the USD 1.25 bn electrical railway project, for which the China Export-Import Bank had reportedly pledged USD 739 mn.
In other Investment Ministry news, Nasr and Suez Canal Authority boss Mohab Mamish told Singapore’s Strait Times in an interview that Egypt and Singapore are in talks to set up an industrial park in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) as they look toward further cooperation.