By Mahmoud Askar , translated by Nourhan Magdi and Hanan Fayed
CAIRO: The Chairman of the Egyptian Stock market Mohamed Omran said that the Euromoney Egypt Conference, which is scheduled to be held in Cairo Sept. 7-8, “comes amid a bad economic situation in the world.”
Omran told Youm7 that the conference coincides with the crisis of declining Chinese growth, which has prompted the devaluation of the yuan to stimulate exports and thus its overall economic growth.
“The conference this year focuses on emerging economies and challenges on regional and local economic situations,” Omran noted.
He further explained that discussions at the conference will tackle how emerging economies have been affected by the decline of the performance of the world economy from 3.5 percent to 3.3 percent, after the oil prices fell significantly.
EGX Chairman Mohamed Omran – YOUM7 (Archive)
“The conference also aims to analyze the Egyptian economy’s situation,” he said.
Omran added saying that although the decline in oil prices would benefit in reducing the subsidy bill burdening Egyptians, this decline “might inflict challenges to the economy amid a decline in the Gulf region revenue regarding investments, tourism and Egyptian employment in the Gulf.”
He continued saying that the conference will seek an “in depth-analysis to understand the overall effects on the Egyptian economy.”
Necessary policies should be set to enhance the competitiveness of the Egyptian economy in the face of internal and external pressure on the short, medium and long terms, EGX head said.
In the short term, regional and global conditions must be observed to determine their impact on the Egyptian economy and ways to tackle and mitigate their influence, he advised.
Long-term policies should focus on the competitiveness of the economy in terms of growth, strengthening enterprises’ small and medium capacities, promoting technology sectors and founding a sophisticated, modern financial sector to attract more investments, he said.
The updates of EGX will be presented during the conference in terms of organizational, legislative and technological developments; a large number of mechanisms and tools have been introduced to EGX, such as the exchange-traded fund, the mechanisms of market makers and wide-scale deals, and other tools that help deepen the market, according to Omran.
Further, the legislative structure of the EGX has been improved by issuing new regulations for registration and disclosure. EGX also has concentrated on helping companies to expand and grow by funding them; the strategy has attracted a large number of companies to register with EGX, which facilitated procedures to increase their capital, leading to the granting of more than 21 billion EGP ($2.68 billion) in the recent period.
Also, major public offerings have returned for the first time since the global crisis, Omran added.
EGX mechanisms to address global and regional fluctuations will be presented as well; they focus on improving and promoting transparency and disclosure levels, significantly helping to give investors a clearer picture of the financial situation of registered companies to ease panic felt by investors due to occasional declines in the global capital markets.
Finally, investment opportunities available in the Egyptian markets will be presented, especially in terms of promising sectors and the degree of diversity enjoyed by the market, and the financial performance of companies in the recent period will also be reviewed.