Salem: EGP 55 Billion Investments in IT Sector by 2017

Dr. Mohamed Salem, Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology declared that the telecommunications information technology sector is immune against remarkable slowdown experienced by many sectors in the Egyptian market, estimating an overall growth of 5.5% for the sector during 2012, while he expected growth rate to exceed 70% in the next five years, adding that investment are estimated to achieve LE 55 billion.

He pointed out that the ministry depends on several axes for the implementation of its ambitious strategy which can be summarized in 4 main themes; promote for high-speed Internet “broadband”, spreading the use of technology in schools to provide students with more than 20 million tablets, increase Arabic content on the Internet, and finally; expanding in the African markets as well as the release of Some of the most prominent of licenses and services via mobile money transfer.

Salem pointed out that the details of the ministry’s five-year strategy aims at reducing the digital gap by activating broadband in 2011 to increase access via high speed internet for up to 12 million subscribers by 2017, linking all schools and educational institutions through allocating about EGP 14.4 billion.

Private sector companies will engage in the plan to be implemented during the next ten years in order to boost average internet speed available to 25 MB per second covering all over Egypt.

Salem affirmed that the ministry has made a “surge” in dealing with the Nile Basin countries, through training programs which succeeded in attracting 11 Minister of Communications to attend the Cairo International Conference for Communications and Information “Cairo ICT”.