AmCham’s Investment & Capital Market and Industry committees jointly held a breakfast meeting on November 5 featuring guest speaker Assem Ragab, the new chairman of the General Authority for Investment & Free Zones (GAFI), who spoke on the topic, “GAFI: old perceptions and current mandate.” Ragab opened his presentation by detailing the historical perception of GAFI as a regulator, then explaining how the national investment agency has taken on new roles during the past few years.

The first of these roles, he explained, is GAFI’s work as an investment promoter. Ragab outlined the agency’s work during the past two years to sell Egypt as a brand to both international and local investors in an attempt to increase their confidence in the Egyptian investment environment. He went on to detail GAFI’s recent work in attempting to move beyond this “macro pitch,” to focus on attracting investors to Egypt using a sectoral approach.

But the process must be further refined. Selling sectors at the macro level or giving generic messages will no longer suffice, argued Ragab. Therefore, GAFI is working to link sector investment promotion strategies to different projects in order to create concrete opportunities that can be presented to investors. This proactive approach requires a sizeable team, which is divided internally into different groups to handle specific tasks. GAFI’s investment promotion team includes a group doing market intelligence and research work, targeting specialists that go abroad to attract investors, facilitation units that assist visiting investors, and aftercare units that manage the clients once an investment has been made in Egypt.

Ragab also discussed GAFI’s second new role: improving investor services throughout Egypt. Specifically, he focused on the authority’s efforts to improve its one-stop shops, where businesses can obtain the licenses and permits needed to get a business up and running from a single office. He discussed the shortcomings of these centers, such as their inability to approve permits for commercial buildings, while noting that GAFI is currently working to broaden the scope of its services. He also talked about other ways the authority is attempting to increase service levels for investors, such as its work in resolving disputes between investors and government bodies.

Finally, Ragab discussed GAFI’s third new role: policy and advocacy. In this role, GAFI conducts procedural and legislative interventions, he said. In the procedural realm, Ragab noted that the authority had worked to improve a number of the indicators included in the World Bank and International Finance Corporation’s Doing Business Report, playing a part in Egypt claiming the spot of “No. 1 reformer” this past year. In the legislative category, he discussed GAFI’s intervention in the legislation process, such as its input into the formulation of the current trade law.

Ragab concluded his presentation by fielding questions from the audience.