The British Egyptian Business Association (BEBA) organized a breakfast briefing themed “In Search of Dollars: Exporting Real Estate to Support Egypt’s Hard Currency Reserves & Annual Remittance Inflows.”
Five high-profile speakers have participated in the panel, namely Eng. Hesham Shoukri, Chairman of the Real Estate Export Council and Founder & CEO of Roya Developments; Eng. Ibrahim El Missiri, CEO of Soma Bay Development Company; Mr. Mohamed Kaoud, Associate Director for Hotels & Tourism MENA Region at Colliers International; Ms. Zeinab Adel, Partner, Head of Egypt at Knight Frank MENA; and Mr. Tamer Yousri Ragheb, Head of Corporate Banking at Emirates NBD.
Mr. Karim Helal, President of Concord International Investment, was the moderator of the panel.
In her opening remarks, Ms. Nadia Lamloum, BEBA CEO, welcomed the esteemed guests and announced the participation of some of Oasis School’s finest students in the Q&A. Motivated to actively take part in the panel, the students are preparing a concept paper on real estate export and how to find the hard currency through such industry.
Mr. Karim Helal then started the talk by welcoming all the distinguished guests, including members of the Embassy of Singapore in Cairo, and the Ambassador of South Korea to Egypt, H.E. Kim Yong-Hyun.
He said the panel aims to explore some unconventional approaches to solve hard currency.
When tackling the challenges to make Egypt a global destination for second homes as the case with Greece, Cypress, Turkey, and most recently Dubai, the panelists had had a heated debate, arguing whom to blame for obstructing the path to develop the exportation of the Egyptian real estate industry.
The panelists were optimistic that things would become better in Egypt given the country’s unique location, easy language, warmer weather, affordable cost of living compared to other countries such as the GCC, and the sincere will of all the stakeholders in the industry.
The panelists eventually agreed that collective work among the real estate sector’s stakeholders: the public and private sector, developers, and lenders could lead the way. This shall be under a new, powerful regulator in charge of overriding the red-tape, outdated measures, ensuring that incentivizing regulations are implemented, and exploring more to create a more attractive ecosystem. In addition, they have also agreed on the importance of having a platform that shares real-time data, and statistics on the Egyptian real estate market to win credibility among investors, and potential buyers.
