The Minister of Investment, Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, participated in a workshop – namely The Growth Workshop - that launched the Arabic version of the Growth Commission's Report on Growth and Development.

The original report, released in May 2008, presented the experiments of 13 countries that achieved high and steady growth rates of at least 7 percent for 25 solid years.

Dr. Mohieldin said, "Launching the Arabic version of the report comes after the global financial crisis and its evident challenges on chances of growth throughout the world, including developing countries."

The event was witnessed by Ministers' Ahmed Darwish of Local Development and Ali Meselhi of Social Solidarity, the European Commission's Ambassador to Egypt, Marc Franco, the Growth Commission's Co-Chair, Danny Leipziger, and Professor Kishore Mahbubani, the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. It was also witnessed by a number of officials and representatives of Egyptian public and private organizations and academics.
          
Mr. Leipziger said that economic growth is not a goal on its own; but what is more important - or key - is the growth reflected by job opportunities and standards of living. He continued by stating that this contributes to lowering poverty rates and achieves prosperity.

The global crisis proved that the demands for governments to stay away and let markets regulate themselves are not sound, he also added.

"Governments in countries that have shown steady growth have been playing a key role in providing the basic services for economic growth and market regulatory rules," Leipziger continued.
 
He also said that the Commission's findings confirmed the importance of infrastructure projects in achieving higher growth rates through cooperation between public and private sectors like in many Asian countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and China.

The Commission's report also focused on the importance of employment and job creation, as well as issues of labor immigration, Leipziger said.

He highlighted the importance of fair distribution of resources and incomes among citizens for everyone to benefit from the fruits of growth. "Countries that recorded high growth rates have distributed their resources in a good manner,” he added.

Leipziger continued that "The report was rewritten after the global financial crisis. It detects the causes of the crisis and the way countries responded, as well as challenges facing capital inflow."

Governments will play a larger role in the post-crisis world. Some suggest governments play the role of crisis managers, he added. He called on governments to keep away from industrial policies because this would affect credit levels in markets.

Dr. Mohieldin opened the discussions on the report's key issues in general before he and Mr. Leipziger started taking questions.                    

Asked why Egypt is not among the 13 countries listed in the report, Dr. Mohieldin said that these countries were able to achieve high growth rates of 7 percent over 25 years. A second wave of countries can follow the footsteps of the 13 countries, such as India, South Africa and Vietnam.

Egypt could have been one of these countries if it followed the five rules they adopted, namely opening up to the global economy, benefitting from investment flows and export growth; economic stability; reliance on high rates of savings and investment; reliance on organized market mechanisms; and the existence of effective leaders applying the rules of good governance.
 
The Egyptian economy has achieved positive indicators in growth rates and in attracting foreign investment. It attracted investments of up to 8 percent of the national income after they used to stand at only 2 percent. In addition, there is considerable potential to increase exports, Minister Mohieldin noted.
 
"It is important to give priority to the development of education through sending educational missions abroad. Such missions have had the great merit of Egypt's renaissance during the reign of Muhammad Ali. It is education and knowledge transfer that helped countries achieve high growth rates," he added.

In reply to a question about subsidy and energy prices, Dr. Mohieldin replied: "During the past seven years, there were numerous revisions to the prices of energy, especially for energy-intensive projects. Indeed, there should be further community dialogue about this issue."
 
Answering a question about the government's programs to combat poverty, Dr. Mohieldin said that the government, for the first time, in 2002, began to speak openly about its programs to combat poverty, such as targeting the poorest 1,000 villages, and developing other anti-poverty programs and policies.