Instability, lack of legal certainty the main problems for British investors: Franck

With John Franck leaving his position as UK Trade and Investment Director in Egypt and Jason Ivory taking office in May, the Daily News Egypt interviewed Franck to review the bilateral trade and investment relationship between Egypt and the UK over the period he had been in post. Franck listed the challenges British investors face in the country, reaffirming his positive outlook regarding the economy.

How do you evaluate the commercial relationship between Egypt and the UK in the period you have spent in your position?

The time I spent in this job was two years; I arrived just as president Morsi was being elected. During this period, the volume of trade and investments between Egypt and the UK went down (compared to 2009 and 2010) and both exports from Egypt to the UK and imports from the UK to Egypt have been affected. Over the last year we have begun to see an improvement again. UK exports to Egypt are more or less the same in 2013 as they were in 2012, but Egypt’s exports to the UK went up by 21% in 2013. But I think we need to distinguish between trade and investments. The UK is the largest European investor in Egypt, and British companies investing here have continued to invest and expand their operations over all this period. But what has been difficult is attracting new people either to invest or do business.

How many British companies are currently operating in Egypt?

If you ask GAFI [the General Authority for Investments and Free Zones], they will tell you there are 900 companies with British capital in Egypt, but we think that this must be an exaggeration, as we haven’t found anything like that number of companies actually operating here. We know that there are at least between 200 and 250 British companies operating in Egypt and they are probably more, because we keep finding more; there is no obligation on companies to tell the British Embassy that they are doing business in Egypt, or to come through the embassy to do business.

What is the value of those companies’ investments?

If you look at the initial investments or the continued value of investments, I haven’t got that figure. The initial investment of for example BP (British Petroleum) and BG (British Gas) is something around EGP 30bn, but you know that they continue to invest. We haven’t got a figure of the total value of investments, but we know that we are the largest in Europe, and either the largest or second largest investor in Egypt globally. Amongst the main UK companies with a significant presence in Egypt are BP, BG, Vodafone, Barclays, HSBC, Carillion, Unilever, Shell, BAT, GSK, G4S, Kompass, Rexam, Actis, IHG, Astrazeneca and Standard Chartered.