The Canadian Ambassador to Egypt Philip MacKinnon in an interview for Business Today Egypt, spoke about the current situation in Egypt, the Canadian foreign policy and most importantly the growth sectors and the obstacles to growth and how to overcome them.
Here's a part of the interview, for the full article
http://www.businesstodayegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=7921
You mentioned earlier that South Korea had a “tremendous impact” on you. How so?In the 1950s, every left-wing economist said it was the poorest country in the world and would remain the poorest country in the world. Then you see what’s happened.
Like every idealistic foreign service officer, I wanted to find the secret of why South Korea was doing so well when I got there. I thought there were two reasons, one of which is shared by Egypt, and that’s the simple fact that people are willing to make virtually any sacrifice to get their children educated. The other was hope and confidence in the future. They believed that their own lives could improve, and that the lives of their children would be qualitatively and quantitatively — even unrecognizably —better.
That kind of widespread hope and confidence doesn’t exist here, not yet. I hope it will, but it’s not an easy thing to generate.
The benefits of the Nazif government’s economic reforms haven’t “trickled down” to the man on the street yet, have they? Nor has the hope.But hopefully they will. As you know far better than I do, the economic indicators today are quite positive. You’ve got a better group of economic ministers than you’ve had at any time in the last 50 years. I think Dr. Nazif, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, Maghrabi, Mohieldin, Mansour, Boutros-Ghali and people like that are great people who are trying to get something done.
What they need to complement their vision and their achievements is somebody who is a real politician. Somebody who can connect with the people, who can sell the people on these very necessary reforms.
What are the growth sectors going forward?Education, for certain — perhaps we can come back to that in a moment. I would hope agriculture would be another one. Egyptian growers are very aware that far from the public perception, agriculture is not a low-tech venture. You don’t just toss down some wheat, thresh the top off and send it somewhere — the degree of work done on seeds, yields, etc, is extremely advanced. I would like to get canola, which is a crop that can be grown in winter and in places like Toshka, more into Egypt. And it’s an edible oil — Egypt imports millions in edible oils — and its health benefits are on par with olive oil.
Going forward, Egypt will be paying more and more attention to high-tech agriculture. I always make a point of telling Canadian businesses, “What you have to understand about Egypt is that there are 78 million people, and the cultivatable area and the liveable area is the size of Denmark.” Seventy-eight million people. Forget about self-sufficiency and focus on strategic priorities. If this is done, then expansion of agriculture to include more and more advanced methods will be important.
And it’s not just Canada selling agricultural technology to Egypt. There are so many things that we source from Mexico, for example, that we could be sourcing from here, particularly as we work through customs, transportation and sanitation issues.
One of the biggest obstacles to growth, though, will be the mismatch between labor supply and the market’s demands, particularly as more and more communications and IT companies come in. There’s a large, educated workforce here, but skills need to be upgraded. That’s why you hear about business people having problems getting the employees they need in a country with 10% unemployment.
Is the workforce educated or educable? Both. They’ve gone through the education system and as graduates they’re ready to take on additional training. It’s not a problem with the graduate, but with a system that puts 70,000 people into a single faculty of business administration at Cairo University. The biggest university in Canada is the University of Toronto with 70,000 students!
Is Canadian immigration policy changing?
No. If you look at opinion polls in Western countries since 9/11, there is probably only one country where a huge majority of the population agrees with the proposition that immigrants make a positive contribution to the society —and that is Canada. A large majority.
We’ve had two federal elections in Canada in the last four years, and immigration policy has not been an issue in either of them —not for a moment. The only time it has come up has been people asking how we can do more to make it possible for immigrants to have their foreign academic and professional credentials recognized in Canada.
How many Egyptian-Canadians — or Canadian-Egyptians — are there today?It’s hard to count, but there are probably 250,000 Egyptian-Canadians. That’s a large diaspora in a nation of just 33 million people. And Egyptians, like the 250,000 or so Iranian-Canadians, do extremely well in Canada.
# posted by Mariam @ 1:01 PM
