Egypt Govt's New Economic Team Dominated by Technocrats

With only the minister of finance remaining from the previous government of former prime minister Kamal El-Ganzouri, the economy ministers in newly-appointed PM Hisham Qandil's new cabinet are mostly new faces and technocrats in their respective fields. Two out of Egypt's four core economic ministerial portfolios – finance and investment – have already been announced. Heads of the international cooperation and planning ministry and the trade and industry ministry, meanwhile, have yet to named. Fayza Abul-Naga, Egypt's long-serving minister of international cooperation and planning, announced last week that she would not be part of the new cabinet. Ministers of other economy-related portfolios – supply and internal trade, tourism, and petroleum – have also been announced. Only the finance minister, Momtaz El-Saeed, was kept at his post, while new figures were named for the remaining economic posts. Following are the names and brief profiles of the ministers announced to date.

Core economy portfolios
Momtaz El-Saeed, finance minister
El-Saeed was second-in-command at the finance ministry before being appointed minister in December of last year by former premier El-Ganzouri. El-Saeed was called from retirement in mid-2012 to serve as deputy finance minister to then-finance minister Hazem El-Biblawy. He is known for being a disciplined bureaucrat, spending much of his career working on state budgets. During the late 1990s he served as general director of the ministry's budget division. No drastic policy changes are expected from El-Saeed, given his conservative inclinations, as seen in Egypt's 2012/13 state budget, which he prepared.

That budget includes 8.8 per cent growth in state spending, barely keeping in line with inflation. El-Saeed, who presented the budget to the currently-dissolved parliament two months behind schedule, was the target of criticism by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, which claimed that the delay had been deliberate. One FJP official dubbed El-Saeed's budget "a plot" to make the new president fail. "This budget is exactly the same as every other Mubarak-era budget," Ashraf Badr El-Din, former MP and head of the FJP's economic policy committee, told Ahram Online in June. "The same failed policies will yield the same results." El-Saeed rarely appears in the media, and, unlike his predecessors, maintains a low profile vis-a-vis public.

Osama Saleh, investment minister
Saleh, chairman of Egypt's General Authority for Free Zones and Investment (GAFI), was appointed investment minister in the new government. The investment ministry seat has remained vacant since Mahmoud Mohieldin stepped down in September 2010 after being appointed managing director of the World Bank. Since then, the trade and industry minister has served as stop-gap investment minister. Born in 1960 and a graduate of Cairo University's commerce faculty, Saleh was appointed by Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Nazif as the chairman of GAFI in September of 2009. He also served as chairman of Egypt's Mortgage Finance Authority from 2005 to 2009. During the past year and a half, GAFI has worked on resolving land disputes between investors and the government regarding land allocations by compensating the state for the difference in value of the land in question.

Many observers criticised the move, however, claiming that the sums paid by investors were much less than the land’s real value. Following last year's revolution, many investors faced legal challenges to their land holdings after accusations that they had illegally acquired vast swathes of state land. GAFI is a governmental entity concerned with regulating and facilitating investment, foreign and otherwise. It also acts as Egypt's sole 'one-stop shop' for investment, which aims at helping investors worldwide take advantage of opportunities in Egypt. The number of days required to start a business in Egypt fell from 19 in 2007 to only seven in 2012, while the number of procedures required to start a business fell during the same period from ten to six. Egypt currently ranks 21st worldwide in terms of the ease of starting a business, according to doingbusiness.org, and is in second place after Saudi Arabia in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Economy-related portfolios
Osama Kamal, petroleum minister
Osama Kamal is the chairman of the Egyptian Petrochemicals Holding Company (Echem), which belongs to the petroleum ministry. Established in 2002, Echem is mandated with managing and developing Egypt's petrochemicals industry. Echem owns shares in ten affiliated companies worth some LE2.4 billion. The company realised total revenues of LE360 million ($60 million) in 2009/2010, representing 13 per cent growth on the previous year. Born in 1959 in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig, Kamal graduated from the chemistry department in the engineering faculty at Cairo University in 1982. He began his career as an engineer at the state-owned Engineering for Petroleum and Process Industries (Enppi). Several years later, he moved to Petrojet, another public-sector energy company. In 2002, he helped establish Echem and was appointed company chairman in 2009. During his tenure as head of Echem, the crisis erupted concerning the Agrium fertiliser plant in the Nile Delta city of Damietta. In 2008, the Canadian factory faced a well-organised popular campaign that claimed the factory was bad for the environment. Accordingly, the Egyptian government abruptly announced the project's cancellation, and the Canadian company was offered a 26 per cent stake in state-owned Egyptian fertiliser producer MOPCO. The apparent resumption of the project in 2011 again galvanised local activists, dragging the company – which is 30 per cent owned by Echem – into further controversy.

Hisham Zazou, tourism minister
Currently serving as senior assistant to Tourism Minister Mounir Fakhry Abdel-Nour, Zazou's appointment comes as a relief to many in the embattled industry. As he does not belong to an Islamist party, Zazou's appointment eases the fears of workers in Egypt's tourism sector, which many had feared might be seriously impacted by Islamic rule. Many sceptics had speculated that the Muslim Brotherhood and its new president would not tolerate the European tourist lifestyle, characterised by beach parties, bikinis and alcohol. Born in 1954, Zazou graduated in 1980 from Ain Shams University's commerce faculty. Zazou began his career by working for the City Bank Group for five years in Cairo. Afterwards, he entered the tourism field after helping to establish a tourist agency in the US targeting the Egyptian market. From 2004 to 2007, Zazou headed up the Egyptian Tourism Federation. He is the first Egyptian to serve as a deputy in the World Tourism Organisation's business council.

Abu-Zeid Mohamed Abu-Zeid, supply and interior trade minister Before his appointment as supply and interior trade minister, Abu-Zeid served as vice president of Egypt's Food Industries Holding Company. Unlike his predecessor, Gouda Abdel-Khalek – a prominent leftist economist and politician – Abu-Zeid is a relatively unknown bureaucrat. The supply and interior trade ministry is responsible for providing the wider Egyptian public with vital commodities. Accordingly, the minister is traditionally held responsible for occasional shortages of butane gas (used for cooking in most Egyptian households) and bread. Founded in 1983, the Food Industries Holding Company is a state-owned company boasting a capital of LE2.4 billion. The company comprises 23 companies working in the fields of sugar, fodder, milk, pasta, paper and preserved food production.