Egypt eyes water laws, state land

2010-12-20 12:11

Cairo - Egypt will improve water management, tighten regulation of state land and boost internal trade under legislation planned for the new parliament, President Hosni Mubarak said on Sunday.

Mubarak said business-friendly reforms would energise new industries as the government seeks to raise annual economic growth to 8% over the next five years.

Egypt's economy grew by around 7% in each of the three years before the global economic crisis. Growth then slipped to 4.7% in 2008-09, and was 5.1% in 2009-10.

Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali on December 13 forecast growth of 7% in 2011-12 and 8-8.5% thereafter.

A fifth of Egypt's 79 million population lives on less than $2 a day, according to United Nations figures, and many say rapid economic growth is not trickling down to most of the poor.

Mubarak said the government was targeting the creation of 700 000 jobs in the coming year.

He called on parliament, in which the ruling party holds a overwhelming majority, to pass laws "to regulate domestic trade and transactions, to stimulate the climate for investment and promote smaller investors".

Muslim Brotherhood sidelined

The opposition Muslim Brotherhood previously held a fifth of seats in the lower house, enough to give it a platform to attack state policy but not to block legislation.

The illegal but tolerated movement is absent from the new assembly after it failed to win a seat in the first round of elections on November 28 and resolved to boycott the second round.

Opposition parties and rights groups said the vote was rigged in favour of Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP), which won 420 of the 508 seats contested in the lower house, according to official figures.

Political analysts said ridding parliament of many government critics would help ensure a smooth presidential election in 2011.

Mubarak, who is 82 and had gallbladder surgery in March, has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election. If he does not, many Egyptians see his son Gamal as a likely successor. Both father and son have denied such plans.

In a lively speech peppered with humorous asides, Mubarak said parliament's agenda must include laws to "develop a framework to prevent abuses to state land".

A series of court rulings since June over the sale of state land to Talaat Moustafa Group have highlighted conflicts between different laws governing state land sales for re-development and raised concern among real estate investors.

Mubarak called for laws to improve use of groundwater in Egypt, a mostly desert country with a fast-growing population.

"We must realise that to meet the growing demand for water requires us to shoulder our responsibility to rationalise water and develop irrigation and agricultural policies," he said

- Reuters