Strikes damaged Egypt's vital export industries on Thursday as manufacturers kept factories idle because a nation-wide bank shutdown stopped them buying supplies and selling their goods, industry officials said. Business leaders are calling on the ruling military council in charge since President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow to end the strikes and ensure banks re-open as planned on Sunday, the start of the next working week.
-- Steel, engineering, food, textile firms cut output
-- Banks due to re-open on Sunday
The interim government has sharply cut the nation's economic growth forecast to between 3.5 and 4 percent from around 6 percent before the popular uprising. Egypt's stock market has been shut for three weeks after plunging as the unrest began.
The political turmoil has cost the country's tourism, construction and manufacturing industries at least 10 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.7 billion), the CAPMAS government statistics agency said earlier on Thursday. Taher Gargour, Deputy Chief Executive of ceramics maker Lecico, said many will start to question the wisdom of investing in Egypt if the unrest does not quickly subside.
Metallurgical firms were working at only 20 to 50 percent of capacity and the engineering sector was operating 25 to 35 percent below normal levels because of the bank closures, the heads of their industry chambers told Reuters. Banks reopened last week after a week-long shutdown caused by the political protests, only to close again early this week after their workers went on strike, leaving a business community unable to honour wire transfers dependent on cash transactions.
Some bankers said the government was probably using the new closure to sift a backlog of requests to transfer funds abroad to make sure none of the funds had been obtained illegally. The central bank last week lengthened the clearance period for transfers abroad of $100,000 or more to five days from the previous two to give authorities time to review why the money was being transferred, bankers said.
Suez Canal Authority officials said shipping was unaffected by a strike by canal employees. Anecdotal evidence suggests the state textile sector, a major exporter, was worst hit by the strikes, along with banks. Employees at state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla al-Kubra and at textile plants in the coastal city of Damietta stopped work this week.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.