Public private partnership in EGYPT

In 1799, the first attempt to dig a canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea came from
the French expedition of "Napoleon Bonaparte," who hoped the project would solve a thorny
trade problem. The idea was plagued with technical, economic, and political problems until
1854 (Rathbone 1882) when the Ottoman governor of Egypt granted a concession to excavation
of the Suez Canal. In 1858, La Compagnie Universal du Canal Maritime de Suez (Universal
Society of the Maritime Suez Canal) was formed and given the power to build the canal and
operate it for 99 years, after which ownership passed to the Egyptian government. rice field. On
November 17, 1869, the canal was inaugurated in a grand celebration for international shipping
and one of his PPP projects early in the modern era emerged. "His first successful modern BOT
project was the Suez Canal, completed in 1869" (Levy 1996). The successful French
participation in the Suez Canal project prompted the Egyptian government to repeat the model
with another French private partner. La Company du Le Bon. Following a successful lighting
project in Europe, prominent gas baron Charles Le Bon won two key concessions. The first
concession was the lighting of Cairo by lighting gas in 1893. His second power generation first
took place in 1895 in the province of Alexandria, Egypt. The Egyptian government cooperated in
various ways with the domestic and foreign private sector during the first half of the 20th
century until nationalization laws around the middle of the 20th century overruled these
efforts. These laws undermined private sector involvement in the Egyptian economy on an
unprecedented scale, favoring the public sector for nearly two decades. In the mid-1970s, with
the adoption of the "Infeta" opening-up policy, Egypt's economic policy compass switched to
capitalism rather than the socialism that was fully adopted in the early 1960s. A few years later,
the Egyptian economy grew remarkably until her 1986, when Egypt recorded an astonishing
fiscal deficit of 14% of her Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (CBE 1987). In 1990, when the balance
of payments deficit was 11.4 billion Egyptian pounds and inflation was 15%, the budget deficit
amounted to 17.2% of her GDP (CBE 1991). The Egyptian government had been negotiating
with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since her mid-1970s, but no concrete action was
taken until the early 1990s. In 1991, the government announced an economic reform and
structural adjustment program developed under her IMF and World Bank leadership. The
program's main goals are to improve Egypt's creditworthiness (Korayem 1997) and transform
the Egyptian economy into a market-based economy rather than a socialist model (IMF 1991).
Privatization of public sector enterprises has been a central and most difficult step in the
implementation of the program's key strategies. The private sector takes the helm. Egypt
enacted Law No. 203 of 1991 (EOG 1991) as the legal framework for the privatization program
that began in earnest in the same year. The program covered 314 public sector companies with
assets of 104 billion EGP and 1.08 million employees (MOP 1992). Figure 1 shows the pace of
privatization ten years after the law came into force. By 1993, only 6 companies had been
privatized, which was very disappointing. Despite notable progress in the years that followed,
the total number of privatized companies was far below expectations. The government did not
adequately implement programs to overcome concerns about the private sector because of the
prevailing socioeconomic thinking of the time. Opposition to the privatization plan has been
loud, and some workers' groups have warned the government against such a move. The slow
pace of privatization has pushed the government into a new gray zone between the public and
private sectors: PPPs (PCSU 2002).