Greek Community of Alexandria

Tag: Egypt

  • Hundreds of coffins to be restored in Egyptian conservation project

    Hundreds of coffins to be restored in Egyptian conservation project

    Egypt will restore hundreds of coffins dating back thousands of years to the time of the pharaohs as part of an American-Egyptian project to preserve and document one of the world’s oldest civilisations, a director of the project said.

    The conservation effort, funded by a US grant, will restore more than 600 wooden coffins that date to various eras of ancient Egypt and which are currently stored at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

    “There has been no other project like this worldwide, with this number of coffins being documented or restored,” said head of the museum’s restoration department, Moamen Othman.

    Egypt was awarded the conservation grant worth $130,000 (£105,000), in December 2015. That project is part of a larger US-Egypt treaty signed in 2016 to curtail illicit trafficking of the country’s rich cultural heritage.

    Antiquities theft flourished in Egypt in the chaotic years that immediately followed its 2011 uprising, with an indeterminate amount of heritage stolen from museums, mosques, storage facilities and illegal excavations.

    Global interest in Egypt’s pharaonic era remains high. The hunt for the resting place of the lost queen Nefertiti grabbed international headlines in 2015, though the search has yet to bear fruit.

    The gilded ancient relics and resting sites of the pharaohs were once the cornerstone of a thriving tourism sector, a vital source of foreign currency, that has suffered setbacks since the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

    The Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP), a US programme founded in 2001, has been responsible for the conservation and restoration of countless ancient sites, museums and artefacts around the world.

    The fund previously helped Egypt to conserve a mausoleum in historic Cairo and an ancient temple in upper Egypt.

    “One of the main goals of the project is to ensure that the [Egyptian] Museum has a full inventory of the objects and understands their conservation needs so that the coffins can be made available for research by scholars but also for the public,” AFCP programme director Martin Perschler said.

    “It means that in the long run more people here in Egypt and people from around the world will have the opportunity to discover and appreciate the full range of heritage and of history within this single collection of coffins.”

    (www.theguardian.com)

  • Moody’s expects economic growth for Egypt by 4% in 2017

    Moody’s expects economic growth for Egypt by 4% in 2017

    CAIRO, Jan 16 (Aswat Masriya) – Moody’s Investor Service expects that Egypt’s economy will grow by 4% in 2017, and the growth rate will increase 4.5% in the following year.

    Moody’s attributes this potential increase to private consumption and foreign investments which will push forward economic development in Egypt, in a report published on Sunday.

    The report, which forecasts the economic progress for the Levant and North African countries, also said that the weak government performance, internal challenges, and geopolitics remain a threat to its dominant debts.

    The report expects that the report expects that trade deficits will reach 7.5%, but will improve in the following year by going down to 6%.

    “Meanwhile, Egypt maintains its position as the strongest economic assessment in the region; which not only reflects its significance but also its growth prospects compared to other countries,” the report read.

    Deputy director Elisa Parisi-Capone said the abundance of foreign funding through IMF loan programmes which are followed by 4 out of 5 countries in the Levant and North Africa bolsters Moody’s credit expectations for the region, in an official statement.

    (en.aswatmasriya.com)

  • Belarus to assemble tractors in Egypt’s Alexandria

    Belarus to assemble tractors in Egypt’s Alexandria

    An official ceremony to open a modernized plant to assemble Belarus tractors took place in Alexandria, Egypt, BelTA has learned. The company used to assemble tractors of other producers before. However, the production stopped over time and the plant was abandoned. Last year Belarus reached an agreement with private Egyptian companies to refit the production line at the company with a view to start assembling Belarus tractors. “The modernization of the plant will make it possible to export the goods which will be produced in Egypt. The terms of the free economic zone provide an opportunity for healthy competition in neighboring regions. I think that in a two years’ time it will be an exemplary production facility in our friendly country, Egypt,” MTZ Director General Fyodor Domotenko said.
    In his words, Minsk Tractor Works has undertaken commitments to provide engineering support to the company as a producer of all types of farming equipment. Apart from that, Belarus is ready to train specialists for the plant in Alexandria free of charge.
    The company’s current capacity is 2,000-2,500 tractors a year. There are plans, however, to increase it to 5,000 vehicles a year in the future. At least 30% of the goods will be bound for export. The commissioning of the Belarusian-Egyptian manufacturing facility was an important event for Alexandria, with the local authorities, representatives of the Egyptian ministries and economic zones attending the official opening ceremony.

    (eng.belta.by)

  • Zohr, Atul, North Alexandria fields to start production this year: Petroleum Ministry

    Zohr, Atul, North Alexandria fields to start production this year: Petroleum Ministry

    Minister of Petroleum Tarek El-Molla said that the gas fields of Zohr, Atul, and North Alexandria will start the first phase of production this year.

    El-Molla added in a statement that starting production in these fields will have a positive impact on increasing the production of gas and reducing the gap between production and domestic consumption in Egypt.

    Egypt imports petroleum products worth about $700m per month, at a time when the country is suffering from the scarcity of hard currency.

    Saudi Aramco stopped supplying Egypt with petroleum products since October, despite the agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia stating that the latter will secure Egypt’s requirements for petroleum products for five years.

    Italy’s Eni discovered the Zohr field, the largest natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea, in Shorouk offshore concession back in August 2015.

    A memorandum of understanding was signed on the development of the Atul exploration during the Egypt Economic Development Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh.

    The Atul field was discovered in March 2015 and has proven reserves of 1.5tn cubic feet of gas and 31m barrels of condensates, according to the Ministry of Petroleum.

    El-Molla said during the general assembly of the Belayim Petroleum Company (Petrobel) that the large investments of foreign partners in research, exploration, and production works, especially in the deep Mediterranean waters, confirm the tremendous opportunities available in the Mediterranean region.

    Chairperson of Petrobel, Atef Hassan, said in a statement that the company approved investments worth $834m in the current fiscal year (FY) 2016/2017 to intensify exploration, drilling, and development activities of discovered fields in the Nile Delta and the Gulf of Suez.

    Hassan said that these investments have increased oil and gas production rates of the company’s fields by 30% and they also contribute to conducting new explorations.

    He added that the company adopted investments worth $630m and about $214m under the approved budget for the next FY in order to continue intensifying exploration activities and develop fields.

    (www.dailynewsegypt.com)