Industrialization in Egypt: Historical Development and Implications for Economic Policy

Ronia Ahmed Hawash ()
Additional contact information
Ronia Ahmed Hawash: Faculty of Management Technology, The German University in Cairo

No 1, Working Papers from The German University in Cairo, Faculty of Management Technology

Abstract: Although Egypt has begun industrialization long ago (1920's), it is still lagging far behind other countries that have begun the industrialization process much later than Egypt. The arising problem is that the Egyptian manufactures' sector is facing a deteriorating position in terms of trade, as the Egyptian economy faces competitive pressures from three fronts: First, countries within the MENA region which opened up their economies early and took positive measures to increase their competitiveness such as Tunisia and Morocco. Second, East Asian economies and European transition economies which are characterized by having more efficient productive structures using skilled labor and capital intensive activities and hence produce higher value added and better quality goods. Third, the large unskilled, labor abundant, low wage economies such as China, India and Bangladesh that have been integrating rapidly in the global economy, exerting growing competitiveness pressures on countries exporting low-skilled manufactures such as Egypt. This paper deduces that the constraints to having a booming industrial sector are related to the inefficient human resource development, technical constraints, legislative constraints and economic constraints. Accordingly, the paper recommends having more investments in human development, building the capabilities of the public sector, more enhancements for the small industries, and managing the process of integration in the global economy.

Keywords: Industrial development; industrial policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E61 L60 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-his and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://mgt.guc.edu.eg/wpapers/001hawash2007.pdf First version, 2007 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:guc:wpaper:1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from The German University in Cairo, Faculty of Management Technology Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr.Dina Yousri ().