Interview: Egypt seeks to learn from China's "unique" development experience: official

CAIRO, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Egypt seeks to learn from China's "unique, distinguished, and rich" development experience and encourages the advancement of micro, small, and medium-sized industries which had contributed to China's development, an advisor to Egyptian prime minister said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"We are working hard to learn from and benefit from China's development experience. As a result, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi attaches great importance to micro, small, and medium-sized industries, and has relaxed the terms of related loans to encourage them," said Hani Mahmoud, an advisor on administrative reform to Egypt's prime minister.

Mahmoud, also a former minister of administrative development, said this type of development creates a lot of job opportunities and encourages young people to start their own businesses and look for production and service projects to work on rather than waiting for a government job.

Highlighting long-standing strong and friendly bilateral relations between Egypt and China, he expressed hoped that Egypt would become successful in learning from China's experience in details in order to achieve a true renaissance befitting Egyptian civilization and history.

The Egyptian president inaugurated and inspected a number of big development projects in Upper Egypt a few days before the New Year as part of a government initiative to develop the southern provinces. According to Mahmoud, the initiative demonstrates Egypt's aspiration to "achieve a comprehensive development boom in all regions."

Egypt and China collaborate on a number of development projects in several Egyptian provinces, covering sectors of construction, transportation, industrialisation and energy.

Some 50 km east of Egypt's capital Cairo, China State Construction Engineering Corporation has made significant progress in building a massive 20-tower business district in Egypt's new administrative capital city.

In Upper Egypt, TBEA Sunoasis, a Chinese clean energy company, completed the building of three solar power stations at the Benban Solar Energy Park in Aswan Province in March 2019.

In August 2019, China's leading TV manufacturer Konka inaugurated a LED TV factory in Beni Suef Province.

In the desert west of Upper Egypt's province of Minya, Chinese international drilling firm ZPEC has so far drilled more than 140 water wells out of 300 for Canal Sugar, a 1-billion-U.S.-dollar joint venture between Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to build the world's largest beet sugar factory.

The Egyptian prime minister's advisor hailed "Egyptian-Chinese cooperation in various fields," which helps Egypt to achieve comprehensive development.