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follow up
lessons ban loses round 1
[“the real school system,” june 1998]
the long-promised government initiative to curb private lessons
may finally be taking place. or maybe not. as of press time, confusion
reigned among many egyptian students after an aborted – and
many say completely mishandled – attempt to regulate the private
after-school lessons that as we reported last june have all but
replaced an overcrowded and inefficient public school system.
the latest chapter in the story stems from a mysterious ministry
of education decree banning private lessons that reportedly was
implemented in a number of governorates before being shelved without
explanation after several days of student street protests in various
cities. “it’s a complete mess,” said auc arabic professor
el said el badawi, who has said previously that the special classes,
through which teachers can make up to 20 times their regular salaries,
are the only thing holding the state education system together.
nnthe trouble started in late february, when teachers in damanhur,
the capital of beheira governorate, told their students that they
had been warned by governor farouk el tellawy to stop giving private
lessons in light of a new ministerial decree. students, faced with
the prospect of no lessons just a few months before the dreaded
all-or-nothing thanawiyya amma yearend exams, reacted angrily.
nn“if they want to change the system, fine. but not in the
middle of the year,” said marwa, a 16-year-old damanhur student
in her final year of the three-year, precollege thanawiyya system.
nnthe protests in damanhur started at omar kamel el wakeel girls’
school, which marwa attends. after school let out at 12:30, the
girls marched down to the governorate building, shouting, “lost,
lost, our futures are lost,” and, “school doesn’t
do, lessons or nothing.” the students shouted for gover-nor
el tellawy to come out and address them. when he didn’t appear,
they moved on to the education administration building.
the protests grew in size and intensity each day, with boys’
school students joining up with their female peers. at first, state
security forces merely surrounded the protesters and watched. on
the fourth successive day of protests, however, the crackdown began.
uniformed and undercover police roughed up the young protesters
and took down their names.
authorities accused teachers, who earn an estimated £e 7 billion
a year from private lessons, of encouraging the pro-tests. teachers
wouldn’t comment on the subject. marwa said one of her teachers
told the class that the protests wouldn’t do any good. her
younger brother wael, who is in the second thanawiyya year, said
his teachers never mentioned the subject.
reports on the protests were few and far between – the state
press rarely reports on street protests of any kind – but damanhur
students say they heard of similar demonstrations in mansoura and
damietta. business monthly was unable to independently confirm reports
of student protests outside of damanhur.
in the end, it was announced to students that the decision would
be delayed until the start of the 1999-2000 school year. the private
lessons in damanhur have returned to business as usual.
as of press time, the details of the ministerial decree, what shape
it might take in the future and whether it existed at all remained
a mystery. numerous attempts to contact the ministry of education
for comment were unsuccessful. adding to the confusion was the fact
that the decree wasn’t uniformly applied around the country.
students in alexandria, for example, never heard anything about
it.
if some sort of genuine restriction or regulation of special classes
is indeed in the works, questions exist as to how the government
can enforce it. the very nature of the private lessons – which
usually take place in the home of the teacher or one of the students
– means that any kind of enforcement short of following teachers
24 hours a day will be a logistical nightmare.
in damanhur, the problem was a little easier to ap-proach, since
many teachers had taken to collectively renting blocks of apartments
and turning them into full-time “lessons centers.” but
if some sort of ban or regulation is issued, the students and teachers
could easily revert to previous decentralized methods to skirt the
authorities. and the reactions of the students in damanhur are a
reminder of just how volatile and complicated an issue education
re-form can be.
in the end, students and teachers insist that the private lessons
industry is merely a symptom of the larger problem of inefficient
public schools. “the lessons aren’t the problem,”
said mahmoud, a third-year thanawiyya student. “the lessons
are there because the schools don’t work. the lessons are the
solution. so instead of fixing the problem, they ban the only solution
we have.”
ashraf khalil
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bids sought for new sharm
[“sharm el sheikh ii,” july 1998]
charming sharm, an integrated development company, has called for
bids on a build, own, operate, transfer contract to provide water,
sewer and electricity infrastructure for the south sinai re-sort
town of nabq.
the boot contract, which would run for 25 years, envisions the construction
of water desalination and sewage treatment plants as well as water,
sewage, irrigation and electricity networks. a tender for a boot
power station is also in the works. another option for charming
sharm is to bid out water, sewage, irrigation and electrical networks
on the basis of normal contracting. the deadline for bids is may
16.
mahmoud hamed, managing di-rector of charming sharm, said res-ponse
has been good. “there are more than 20 foreign companies who
have shown interest and have bought the tender documents,”
he said.
charming sharm has assigned sabbour associates engineering of-fice
to produce feasibility studies, designs, drawings and technical
de-tails of the infrastructure needed for the first phase of nabq’s
development, entailing an area of 14 million square meters. the
total cost of in-frastructure and facilities is estimated at £e
1 billion.
as we reported last july, charm-ing sharm is engaged in an ambitious
plan to build a tourist resort town from scratch on a 28 million
square meter plot of beachfront land on the gulf of aqaba, south
of the nabq protectorate and just 10 kilometers north of sharm el
sheikh. although the project is still in its be-ginning stages,
hamed said, a tourist center rivaling sharm el sheikh should be
fully functioning by 2001. adel rady, chairman of the tourism development
authority, said the city will boast 14,500 hotel rooms, four times
the number in sharm el sheikh today. by 2007, the target date of
completion, total investment in nabq is expected to have reached
£e 4 billion.
charming sharm – the new sharm el sheikh development co. –
is the joint effort of 28 independent in-vestors including oriental
weavers, oriental resort, the egyptian deve-lopment group and travco
tourism, among others. the company is managing the nabq project
and will be handling construction and maintenance of infrastructure.
leila atraqchi
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another shot at bonds
[“bond,” april 1998]
egypt’s ministry of finance offered £e 2 billion in
10-year treasury bonds in april at a fixed annual rate of 10 percent,
pushing ahead its program to issue longer-term bonds but raising
more ques-tions about pricing.
the offering was egypt’s second try at issuing bonds at that
maturity, the nation’s longest. investors shunned the first
offering in february, whose yield of 9.5 percent was seen as too
low. observers said the yield on the april bonds – equal to
the yield on seven-year treasury bonds issued in january –
was closer to the mark but probably still too low to raise much
demand from retail investors and mutual fund managers, who are seen
as a litmus test of real demand.
“i think it’s the first positive step by the authorities
to show they’re reacting to the market,” said mostafa
assal, head of fixed income at efg-hermes. “implic-itly, they’re
saying, ‘we made a mistake.’ but half a percent is not
enough. it should have been around 11.”
ministry of finance officials weren’t available for comment.
but mustafa oweiss, adviser to the governor of the central bank,
which is managing the issue, said the april bond had been priced
closer to the market’s expectations than the february bond.
hossam raouf, senior director for american express bank in the middle
east, agreed, saying that he expected a better reception this time
around. results of the sale, which closed april 15, weren’t
available at press time.
as we reported in april 1998, market professionals had long pushed
the government to take the lead in reinvigorating the bond market.
last summer, they got what they wanted when egypt embarked on a
program of issuing longer-term treasury bonds in an effort to en-courage
corporate borrowing, spark secondary-market trade and restructure
its mainly short-term domestic debt. the ministry of finance offered
£e 500 million tranches of seven-year bonds in august, september,
october and jan-uary, and £e 2 billion in 10-year bonds in
february.
retail investors and mutual funds, who have enjoyed priority allocation
in the program, snapped up the four issues of seven-year bonds at
10 percent. but analysts said those investors balked at the pricing
of the february bonds, forcing the government to turn to state financial
institutions to cover the offering.
analysts said it was likely the government would have coverage problems
with the april issue as well. the interest rate, though better than
february’s, was still seen as too low. in addition, the market
at the time of the offering was running extremely short on egyptian
pounds, as banks and other institutions had heavily sold local currency
to buy much-needed dollars from the central bank. whether the ministry
would be able to squeeze £e 2 billion out of a tight market
was unclear. (intercapital securities, however, re-ported that the
central bank had eased the pound shortage by repurchasing £e
1 billion in treasury bills in the week the 10-year bond offer closed.)
“i don’t think it will be covered at 10 [percent],”
assal said. “i think it needs 11.”
higher rates, however, aren’t really an option. despite falling
inflation and years of fiscal prudence in egypt, interest rates
have remained unchanged, raising the government’s cost of borrowing
and limiting growth. the government is said to be anxious to see
rates come down, but is worried that too steep a reduction could
weaken the egyptian pound. as a result, some have seen the recent
bond issues as efforts to prepare investors for lower rates.
andrew dowell
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