Egypt's uprising may ring the political death knell for a group of millionaires who helped shape the government during the past six years.
Ahmad Al Maghraby, a property developer and hotelier, and Ahmad Ezz, chairman of Ezz Steel, Egypt's biggest producer of the metal, were among the businessmen ousted from cabinet and ruling party positions after President Hosni Mubarak turned to former military men for top posts as he clings to power.
"President Mubarak has ordered that businessmen be removed from the government," Prime Minister Ahmad Shafik, a former air force commander, told state-run television this week. "The involvement of businessmen in public service wasn't 100 per cent positive."
The government of premier Ahmad Nazif, which Mubarak fired last week, had attracted record foreign investment, helping the economy expand at the fastest pace in at least two decades. At the same time, political opponents said some local executives used their links with Mubarak to further their own interest.
Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris described members of the previous cabinet as a "scapegoat" for Mubarak.
"They were sacrificed," he said by tele-phone on January 31.
"There are a number of listed companies whose owners are associated with the regime in a big way," Omar Abdullah, a director at A/T Capital Management in Dubai, said.
Official denial
Aside from Al Maghraby, who ran business interests in property and hotel industries before becoming housing minister, the ousted cabinet included Trade Minister Rashid Mohammad Rashid, a former Unilever executive, and Zuheir Garranah, the tourism minister who ran a private business in the industry.
Rashid said on January 30 that he chose not to join the new government. All of the former officials have repeatedly denied any conflict of interest.
About 18 per cent of Egyptians live below the poverty level, with the rate rising to 40 per cent in rural areas, according to World Bank data. Headline inflation in urban areas, the rate that the central bank monitors, picked up to 10.3 per cent in December from 10.2 per cent the previous month.
"The main problem in Egypt is the distribution of the wealth," Hani Al Hussaini, a member of the economic secretariat of the Tagammu opposition party, said. "Most of the wealth is concentrated within the upper class of businessmen," he said by telephone in Cairo.
Shafik was appointed prime minister after former army officer Omar Sulaiman, who has run Egypt's intelligence service since 1993, was named vice-president by Mubarak on January 29.
Mubarak said he will step down this year after protests that left more than 100 people dead. Protesters rejected the offer and demanded he go now.
Jobless benefits
The new cabinet may seek to placate the public by increasing social spending, reversing the policy of the ousted government, which had planned to remove energy subsidies by 2014. Finance Minister Samir Radwan told state-run television this week that the ministry will pay unemployment benefits to people who lost their jobs during the unrest.
The policies may lead to the widening of Egypt's budget deficit to "double digits" in 2011, Standard and Poor's said in a January 31 report. Egypt's budget gap was 8.1 per cent of gross domestic product in the fiscal year that ended in June.
During its tenure, the Nazif cabinet accelerated the sale of state assets. Economic growth, which was 3 per cent in 2003, picked up to an average of 7 per cent in the three fiscal years to June 2008 before the global financial crisis set in. The country needs that growth level to create enough jobs to meet the increase in the working population.
The economy in the country of 80 million people, the most populous in the Arab region, probably grew an annual 6.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2010, compared with 5.5 per cent in the previous three months.
"The Egypt that became known to the world was a privileged elite that did not represent society at large," John Sfakianakis, the Riyadh-based chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi, said by telephone.
