Hamaki hails July revolution gains in economic domains

Dr. Youmn El-Hamaki, Professor of Economics at Ain-Shams University, said that the 23rd of July Revolution has affected to a large extent the national economy

Dr. Youmn El-Hamaki, Professor of Economics at Ain-Shams University, said that the 23rd of July Revolution has affected to a large extent the national economy, built on strong pillars; agriculture and industry. It limited the ownership of land which aimed at redistributing the wealth besides enhancing industrialization by raising a slogan of “manufacturing from metal to rocks”.

In a phone call with (The Breakfast Show), Hamaki added that unfortunately the economic management of the industrial sector neglected exportation and started to concentrate on producing heavy industries which rely on importation of raw material and that was a defect. With public ownership and heavy industrialization, Egypt had a big start with a five-year-plan like South Korea but they turned into export promotion while Egypt concentrated on import substitutions and heavy industries which could not give us a solid advantage in front of our competitors, she illustrated.

Another critical change taken by this revolution is turning from the private sector to the public sector; she conveyed, adding that intensifying the role of the government resulted in significantly reducing the role of the private sector in Egypt. She further mentioned that turning into socialism was another important gain from the July 23 Revolution where the majority of people gave the right to be educated and to benefit from health services.

Hamaki pointed to another gain of the revolution that seriously affected the performance of the economy. The decision that all graduates from universities should have a job opportunity introduced by the government, created, as she believed, a kind of dilemma; despite that it guaranteed a vacancy for every graduate, it had a serious ramifications on the performance of the economy by creating hidden unemployment. The government still suffers from this decision trying to restructure its organizations, she said.

As for Egypt’s foreign policy after the 23rd of July Revolution, its role of leading the African continent and the Arab countries was quite significant; she stated assuming that our relations with African countries were quite good by supporting their revolutions as well as their development projects. Egypt also had good relations with China and Russia, where we used to get all our technology but with the United States and Europe our relations were not quite good; she added, stressing that Egypt in the present time has balanced good relations with all the countries.

She finally pointed out the need to concentrate on our industries and to strengthen competitiveness so that to enable exportation, trying to compensate for the deficit in balance of trade, creating more job opportunities as well as upgrading the skills of our labors to cope with the international markets’ requirements.

(Breakfast Show) is aired on Nile TV International from Saturday to Thursday. This episode is conducted by Dina Hussein.