YEAREND SPECIAL: Mixed performance for major revenue earners
The Egyptian government has structured its economy around three key revenue earners: the Suez Canal, tourism and remittances. All three depend on global economic factors and threatened to undermine the…
YEAREND SPECIAL: Construction, real estate and banking see ups and downs
Economic crises are never a good thing. But depending on the timing, they can be especially devastating.Egypt's economy was in major growth mode when the recession struck last fall. GDP…
YEAREND SPECIAL: Egypt's GDP steady, inflation falls and FDI on target
While last year ended with a note of "cautious pessimism for Egypt's prospects, 2009 demonstrated that the country can rely on its own domestic market to drive growth and that…
YEAREND SPECIAL: M&As and IPOs: The only constant is change
It is said that most start ups fail within the first two years, but even the largest and strongest of businesses are regularly growing, merging, disintegrating, devouring each other in…
YEAREND SPECIAL: New market regulator tops year's economic reforms
CAIRO: One of the major changes in Egypt's economy this year came in June with the creation of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), which brought several regulatory bodies under…
YEAREND SPECIAL: A year of economic stimulus and interest rate cuts
Egypt s measures to deal with the global economic crisis in 2009 have ranged from introducing stimulus packages to spur growth, upping infrastructure spending to keep the economy moving, to…
YEAREND SPECIAL: 2009: Culture in decline
The feared perils of the economic recession hit the Egyptian culture scene hard in 2009, a year that saw most culture centers scaling back their activities, the film industry receiving…
YEAREND SPECIAL: Faint traces, low hopes for local music
There are two problems with trends: they are easily substituted and their effects are short-lived. For an old trend to grow out of fashion, a new one must evolve. But…
YEAREND SPECIAL: The best films of 2009
For the past four years, my best-films-of-the-year list has been restricted to movies screened in Egyptian theaters either via commercial release or in film festivals. And because of these limitations,…
YEAREND SPECIAL: The year in art
2009 has been a somewhat bittersweet year for the local art scene. It was sweet in because galleries have become real powerhouses with a much stronger hold on the reins…