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CAIRO / Reuters
Egypt’s tourism revenues jumped by 170 percent in the first seven months of 2017, reaching $3.5 billion, a government official told Reuters, in welcome news for an economy heavily reliant on the sector for foreign currency and jobs.
The number of tourists visiting Egypt rose by 54 percent in the same seven-month period on an annual basis to reach 4.3 million, he said, attributing the increase to visitors from Germany and Ukraine.
That number is still well below the 14.7 million who visited Egypt in 2010, ahead of the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak and ushered in a prolonged period of political and social upheaval. Europeans made up 75 percent of visitors while Arabs made up 20 percent, said the official, who asked not to be named. Egypt hopes the number of tourists will reach 8 million in the whole of 2017, up from 4.5 million last year, he added.
Tourist revenues should hit $6 billion in 2017, up from $3.4 billion in 2016, the official said, despite a continued flight ban from Russia, traditionally a major source of tourists, after a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in 2015, killing all 224 people on board. A group affiliated with IS claimed responsibility for the downing of the plane, though officials have not confirmed this.
$739MN RAIL LINK TO NEW CAPITAL
Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding with China on Tuesday for Beijing to finance a rail link worth about $739 million serving a new capital the north African country is building, the Egyptian investment minister said.
The link will connect the new capital, under construction in desert some
45 km (30 miles) north of Cairo and
so far unnamed, to an industrial zone. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in 2015 announced the plans for the new
city, which is expected to cost about $300 billion.
Egypt has also signed an agreement for a non-refundable grant from China worth $45 million for a research satellite project, Investment Minister Sahar Nasr said in a statement. Sisi this week attended the BRICS summit in Xiamen, southeast China.