Egypt agreed to allocate land for retailer Carrefour and grant it legal approvals necessary to build ten new branches for the superstore outside Cairo and Alexandria as part of the government's plan to utilise unused parcels of land it owns.
The new stores will cost an estimated LE2 billion (approx. $270m) and will offer foodstuffs produced by the state-owned Holding Company for Food Industries, the supply and internal trade ministry said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
Minister Khaled Hanafy and Hervé Majidier, Executive Regional Director of Carrefour in Egypt, signed a "cooperation protocol,” the ministry said, without giving more details on the deal.
- The Carrefour franchise in the Middle East is held by Dubai retailer Majid Al Futtaim. The company said in January it planned to invest about $2.3 billion in Egypt in the next few years according to Reuters.
The government owns vacant lands in many Egyptian governorates, and it plans to use them to build large supermarket chains, Hanafy said. The new Carrefour stores will be built in a handful of delta governorates including Menoufia and Beheira as well as the Upper Egypt governorate of Port Said.
Egypt has struggled to attract foreign investment since a popular uprising forced former president Hosni Mubarak to step down in 2011. But a stream of aid money from Oil rich countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has helped keep the struggling economy afloat since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
The economy grew 2.2 percent in the fiscal year ending 31 June and is expected to grow 3.5 percent in the current year, according to the IMF.
