Interview: Egyptian economist eyes deepening Sino-Egyptian economic, investment cooperation

CAIRO, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Seeing China as one of the world's largest investment destinations for decades, Egypt is working to be a gateway to Africa for Chinese investment, an Egyptian economist said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

China provides an unparalleled business and economic environment, including terms and conditions for investment, and keeps rapid economic growth while maintaining stability, Mohamed Abdel-Ghany, head of the economics and political science department at Beni Suef University, told Xinhua.

"China has stability in growth and inflation, and it also has huge reserves of foreign currencies that help it control inflation and boost growth and spending," Abdel-Ghany said.

As the world's largest exporter and second largest importer, China boasts a huge capacity to absorb external shocks and thus is the least affected by the current global economic uncertainty and decline in investment, the Egyptian professor noted.

"If we look at Europe, it has problems in energy supply and suffers from high inflation and the repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The same applies to the U.S. economy, which is also facing many problems," Abdel-Ghany said.

He expected the Chinese economy to achieve higher growth in 2023, especially after the "great economic cooperation" it has built with many other countries.

"China signed agreements with a large number of countries to use the Chinese currency in trade, which boosts confidence, stability, and progress in the Chinese economy," the expert explained.

It would be in the interest of both China and Egypt to increase their volume of trade, especially since China may like to deal in yuan at a time when Egypt is suffering from a severe crisis mainly caused by the shortage of U.S. dollars, Abdel-Ghany noted.

Egypt has shown great openness to deepening its economic cooperation with China in the past two years, especially since the beginning of 2023, said the economist.

"There was a memorandum of understanding between the two countries to issue a panda bond equivalent to 500 million U.S. dollars," he added.

Commenting on the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Chinese economy, Abdel-Ghany said China accorded maximum attention to the crisis and was able to come out of it with the minimum human losses.

"All investors think of China primarily as an attractive place for investment," he concluded.