A legal commission was recently set up by Egypt’s Ministries of Supplies and Telecommunication to prepare a law proposal regulating electronic exchanges in the country. The proposal aims to gain Egypt a larger portion of global electronic commerce, reported Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily.
Khaled Abu Ismail, head of the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce Association stated that parliament is expected to debate the new law proposal during its upcoming autumn session.
Ismail estimated the present value of electronic commerce in Egypt at no more than $500 million per annum, a figure he saw as low compared with global e-commerce. International e-commerce, he maintained, presently stands at $1.3 trillion and is estimated to reach five trillion by 2010.
A recently released study by the Egyptian Al-Ahli Bank estimated the value of electronic commerce transactions in the Arab world as a whole at three billion dollars in the year 2001. This figure is expected to rise to five billion dollars in 2002 compared with $1.3 billion in the rest of the world. -- (Mena Report)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
