Mankai says China-Egypt textile park factories will be included in QIZ

Factories at the Chinese textile industrial park in Egypt will be included in the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) protocol, said the park’s Chinese developer Mankai Investment on Wednesday.

Under an agreement reached with the Egyptian government, those factories would be granted zero-tariff access to the U.S. market, Ma Yaojin, chairman of Mankai Investment, told Amwal Al Ghad.

Located in the industrial city of Sadat between Cairo and Alexandria, the sprawling industrial park will span over 3.1 million square metres.

According to an agreement signed between the Egyptian government and state-run Mankai in 2018, the city is intended to house more than 592 Chinese textile and apparel factories.

It will be built over three phases, giving Chinese companies a base from which to export duty-free clothes to the U.S. and EU markets, avoiding the current American tariffs on Chinese imports.

Mankai aims to deliver the first phase, which will include 141 factories, before the end of this year, Yaojin said. The machinery and equipment for more than 45 factories had already arrived at the park at cost worth almost 600 million Egyptian pounds, he added.

The Egyptian Armed Forces Engineering Authority is in charge for executing the infrastructure works of the park.

Signed in late 2004, the QIZ agreement granted Egyptian clothing manufacturers zero-tariff access to the U.S. market as long as their products contained at least 10.5 percent Israeli input.