Dr. Bahaa Helmy Writes: Conflicting Ministerial Statements Signal a Lack of Government Coordination

On 30/5/2016, Dr. Bahaa Helmy writes: Conflicting Ministerial Statements and the Lack of Government Coordination There may be a conflict or overlap of jurisdiction between two or more ministries on a given matter, owing to overlapping or shared competences, or to confused concepts and unclear plans or policies. This is, of course, something that can be resolved or settled as long as there is government coordination and regular meetings of the Cabinet to assess and follow up on the performance of the ministries in their various activities, particularly in the economic field, in order to achieve the country's development goals in light of local and international economic conditions. However, it has recently been noticed that some ministers have been making contradictory statements in the media and various newspapers on the question of investment, particularly privatization programmes or the listing of state-owned companies on the stock exchange. This may point to the absence of the regional and international dimension in the thinking of some officials when making decisions or managing crises — an expression we borrow from the remarks of the esteemed Mr. Adel Hammouda when he spoke about officials' decisions and their humanitarian and political dimensions, as well as their regional and international dimensions. The Minister of Investment stated, at the celebration marking the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Egyptian Securities Association, that investment would be attracted through the offerings programme, which aims to attract foreign capital through the partial offering of state-owned companies and public participation in subscriptions to acquire shares. This is to be carried out under a five-year programme for the partial offering of ownership in state-owned companies. The Minister of Investment also stressed that she aims to cooperate with local and foreign investment banks and consultancy firms to provide opinion and advice on implementing the offerings programme to attract investment, and we heard no response or comment from the Cabinet. In another context, the Minister of Supply affirmed, during his meeting with members of the American Chamber of Commerce, that work had begun on preparing the infrastructure and the legislative framework to create an environment attractive to investment in Egypt, at a time when the Ministry of Investment had not announced the nature of the anticipated legislative amendments or the measures taken to prepare the environment for investment. Recently, the Minister of Public Business Sector came out to say that the "offerings programme" is a proposal of the Ministry of Investment and does not include our companies, and that what the Minister of Investment announced and called the "offerings programme" is a proposal submitted by the Ministry of Investment in which the public business sector did not take part, and that the Minister is therefore answerable for it. He explained that offerings of public entities or capital increases of public companies do not necessarily concern the public business sector alone. He also stated that there is a public sector (companies and banks), including Banque du Caire, which is public sector, so the public business sector companies are not the only state-owned ones. In our view, there should have been no confusion between public sector banks — which fall outside the scope of the investment and public business sector laws and are subject to Central Bank Law No. 88 of 2003 — and the public business sector. This is in order to preserve the independence of the Central Bank and the stability of the Egyptian banking market, learning from past mistakes, when statements by the former Minister of Investment about devaluing the pound caused losses on the stock exchange, which lost 10 billion pounds. Add to this that the conflicting statements of ministers may indicate that the government has no vision regarding the state-owned companies for which a new ministerial portfolio was created. It also raises questions about the approach followed in studying such matters and the way discussions and proposals are managed, and, more importantly, where is the coordination, cooperation and integration among government ministers for the purpose of serving the public interest? Are they working on isolated islands? We see a need to put an end to statements that not only harm the government and its policies, but also damage the supreme interests of the State.