India and Egypt shared their experinces on major economic reforms, emphasising that the two countries have the potential to be market leaders.
During a seminar organised by the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture (MACIC) of the Embassy of India here yesterday on 'Economic Reforms: Sharing of experiences between India and Egypt' the two countries discussed measures for attaining growth and development on a sustainable basis.
The primary focus of the discussion was to share, discuss, evaluate and analyse the learnings arising from the experience of India, which had introduced major economic reforms in the past.
Eminent speakers who elaborated on the theme were Abdel Moneim Said, Director, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo; Ahmed El Safty, Co-Founder, Delta Research Centre in Cairo and Visiting Associate Professor of Practice, The American University in Cairo (AUC), Nihal el-Megharbel, vice minister for monitoring, Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform and Renu Yadav, Third Secretary at the Embassy of India in Cairo.
Abdel Moneim Said gave a brief about the history of political economy in Egypt and how it developed through years.
"Our policies particularly started in 1952 were based on how to make life for poor people easy," Said underlined, adding that currently the Egyptian economy is big despite the hardships that Egypt face nowadays.
Ahmed El Safty said that the Indian experience is very interesting for Egypt because of the similarities between the two countries' strategies as both countries are moving in a parallel track.
During the discussion, the speakers aimed at exploring the various dimensions of reforms in order to gain a better understanding of the factors that lead to successful implementation of the reform process and to the attainment of the primary objectives of growth and development on a sustainable basis.
Nihal el-Megharbel spoke about the sustainable development strategy, Egypt's vision 2030, which is consisted of three main dimensions; economic, social, and environmental, which aim at improving of the quality of life in a way that does not affect the right of following generations for a better life.
On the other side, Renu Yadav spoke about the history of growth in India and how the economic reform, which started in India in 1991, transformed the country to the better in the past two decades.
India's Ambassador to Egypt Sanjay Bhattacharyya said that the roundtable was fruitful as the theme is particularly relevant in this era of increasing globalisation which has necessitated countries around the world to make structural adjustments to their economy in order to be able to compete effectively on a global scale.
"The entire idea of starting this MACIC roundtable was to stimulate discussion so that we can exchange experiences. The idea of this is to have a beginning of a dialogue," the ambassador said.
The ambassador also said that there are many lessons that both countries can learn from each other.
He also recalled that, according to what he has read, some six decades or more back when India and Egypt emerged in this new world in the modern times, both countries were actively collaborating and working together for peace and freedom of the newly emerging countries.
"India and Egypt can be market leaders, there are so many commonalities between our systems, I think we both have large economies...We have a very young population of young people," the ambassador said.
The seminar is part of the twelfth edition of the monthly series of MACIC Roundtable, a monthly seminar seriesinvolving youth, academicians, culture lovers,civil society on issues of mutual interest to India and Egypt.
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