Overall the Egyptian economy is growing by around 7 per cent a year and the ministry is keen to attract further investment to the industrial sector to boost the wider economy.

“Our aim is to continue in the area of industry to lead the Egyptian economic growth,” says Rachid. “Today industry is the leader in terms of growth with 8.5 per cent.”

“We would like to see a continuation of growth in investment in industry,” he adds. “It has grown six or sevenfold fold in the last three to four years to a level of £E45bn ($8.4bn) a year”.

Increasing exports is also one of the ministry’s goals, but the global economic slowdown has already affected its plans.

“We would like to see a continuation of high growth in export. I’m talking more about industrial and value added export,” says Rachid. “We have seen that growing by 45 per cent last year. This year it has slowed down to 30 per cent. We know it will be more challenging in the future because of the world economic conditions but we are hoping we can maintain our export growth above 20 per cent”.