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Monday, 7 September 2020

Rural communities, missing sports trophy and Sudan flooding top stories on talk shows

Business and econ didn’t get much love on the airwaves last night:

Initiative to develop rural communities: Ala Mas'ouleety's Ahmed Moussa spoke with Planning and Economic Development Minister Hala El Saeed, who discussed a presidential initiative to boost living standards for rural communities. The program will see the government invest EGP 13.5 bn by the end of 2020, to improve the lives of some 12.5 mn citizens in these communities, which includes fishermen as well as farmers, El Saeed said, without specifying how the money will be spent. The Tahya Masr Fund will participate in the initiative, which will span 3-4 years. El Saeed also touched on the work of the Sovereign Fund of Egypt (SFE), which she said aims to repurpose national assets to maximize their value, such as the Tahrir Complex, with any unused assets or funds returned to the treasury (watch, runtime: 29:14). El Said yesterday announced the formation of the SFE’s financial services sub-fund, which we recap in detail in this morning’s Speed Round, below.

The case of the missing trophy: Moussa also spoke with Youth and Sports Minister Ashraf Sobhi who discussed the “loss” of one the Africa Cup of Nations trophies. He said the ministry has formed a committee to look into the incident, and it is believed that the trophy, won in 2010, went missing some time around 2012/2013 (watch, runtime: 3:20). El Hekaya’s Amr Adib announced an (unspecified) reward for anyone who leads authorities to its whereabouts (watch, runtime: 3:36).

Legacy of former agriculture minister: Adib phoned former Agriculture Minister Ahmed El Laithi to talk about the legacy of recently deceased former agriculture minister Youssef Waly. El Laithi said that Waly was unfairly caught up in a case involving 10k tonnes of fertilizers being contaminated with carcinogenic materials. He said the nine true culprits were convicted in 2004. Waly, who served for two decades as the country’s agriculture minister, came in for heavy criticism for allowing carcinogenic pesticides to be imported into Egypt and was briefly detained in 2011 (watch, runtime: 12:01).

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