By:Ahmad Abu el-Hamd
On Tuesday morning, the Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Dr. Sahar Nasr inaugurated the Annual Capital Markets Summit held under the auspices of MIIC, in presence of Dr. Ashraf El-Sharkawy, Minister of the Public Business Sector, Mr. Sherif Samy, Head of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), Dr. Mohammed Omran, Executive Chairman of the Egyptian Stock Exchange, and Mr. Mohsen Adel, Deputy-Head of the Egyptian Association for Finance and Investment.
At the beginning of the inaugural session, participants stood a minute of silence in mourning for the victims of the terrorist attack on Mari-Girgis Church in Tanta and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
The Minister explained that MIIC was keen on carrying out all legislative and legal actions to support reforms of the non-banking financial sector, while noting MIIC’s interest in rendering the said sector a fundamental driver of growth and supporter of the private sector through supporting several reform programmes, topped by introducing new tools in the Egyptian capital market.
The Minister also pointed out that the government was discussing important draft laws, including amending the Capital Market Law to promote the principles of governance and transparency according to the most recent international systems, besides issuing a new financial leasing and factoring law to be submitted to the parliament after the cabinet’s approval.
MIIC was keen on maintaining communication with all investors and identifying their views with regard to all laws, added Dr. Nasr.
Further, the Minister indicated that she returned from her visit to the US few days ago as she was in the delegation accompanying the President who dedicated a large part of the visit to the promotion of investment in Egypt through the convention of meetings with leaders of major companies, investment banks and financial institutions there, which were willing to inject new investments in various Egyptian sectors. Meetings with the World Bank (WB) and IMF were also held, where all participants commended the Egyptian government’s economic reform programme and emphasized their support of the procedures taken by the government.
Attracting foreign investments was a main goal for activating the non-banking financial sector, reiterated the Minister, who noted that foreign investments in the stock exchange significantly increased and that foreign financial institutions marked their interest in developing the Egyptian capital market during their visit to Egypt. They also expressed their willingness to develop such market and support the programme developed by MIIC in collabouration with public agencies in the non-banking financial sector, added Dr. Nasr.
Moreover, the Minister stated that MIIC was completely open to receive all proposals for development and adopted all such ideas with the aim to raise the performance level in various financial sector.
Afterwards, the Minister headed to the headquarter of the stock exchange, where she rang the opening bell of the day’s trading session, given that Belton Financial Holding (BTFH) offered 30% of M. M. Group for Industry and International Trade’s shares, which was welcomed by foreign and Arab institutions which represented about 69% of the total shares offered in the private subscription.
