Industry & Retail

Egypt has made some progress in improving industrial development, but the government is working to focus on specialisation in certain segments – particularly textiles and pharmaceuticals. Indeed, scaling up investment in manufacturing is a policy priority, as the country’s value-added growth in this sector has been sluggish compared to other emerging economies. Namely, the country aims to accelerate industrialisation and shift from low-value-added to high-value-added, technology-intensive manufacturing segments. Nonetheless, despite Covid-19 pandemic-induced economic headwinds, the Egyptian retail sector has made significant progress in recent years, particularly in food retail and e-commerce. These segments saw rapid growth due to lockdowns and rising internet penetration rates. In FY 2019/20 and FY 2020/21 the private sector’s share of total investment in the retail and wholesale sectors amounted to 95% of the total, at $9.5bn and $7.4bn, respectively.