Dr. Muhammad Salim -Minister of Communications and Information Technology- said that the communication sector is expected to grow by 7% during the last quarter of the current fiscal year supported by the increase in exports of software and investors sorting to the sector, stressing that the ministry is working according to the strategy that can be summarized in 4 main themes, which are publishing online high speed “broadband”, diffusion of technology in schools, increasing the Arabic content on the Internet, and the expansion in the African markets as well as releasing some licenses like money transfer services via mobile phone in case of security stability.
Salim said that the ministry’s new strategy aims at increasing the contribution of communication and information technology sector in GDP to reach 5% of the sovereign revenue of the state and this should happen by achieving growth rates in the sector ranging between 7% and 10% within the next five years, and also increasing the size of investments by 20% to reach the size of 55 billion EGP, the minister also said that the strategy also aim at reaching a size of information technology exports of outsourcing services to be 2.5 billion $, and the revenues of intellectual property to be 1 billion $.
Salim mentioned that the Strategy will work on the growth of “Egypt Post” as an essential saving tool in Egypt which is expected to achieve an annual increase of 15% on average, and increase the number of technology areas to be 20 regions in the governorates, beside increasing the exports of outsourced information technology services by diversifying the consuming markets of the Egyptian outsourcing exports through stronger involvement of local companies either small or medium enterprises in the exportation of this type of service; and increase the number of professional workers in the field of outsourcing up to 75,000 direct jobs and 220,000 indirect jobs by 2017; and attract more foreign investment by doing global promoting campaigns.
To be mentioned that the average size of telecommunications sector is amounted to 35 billion EGP per year, with an average growth of 12% during the past three years, what represents an average of 4% of Egyptian GDP.
Abd El Hameed Sabry
