In a televised talk during his inspection of Kima Ammonia and Urea Complex in Aswan, El-Sisi lauded progress in the complex, yet warned of a return to a deterioration of factories due to a failure of management. 

He set pricing, management and governance as elements of success for new projects, stressing that past management in the past 40 years by public enterprise companies has “proven inefficient”.

“The private sector is welcome to contribute in new projects and factories. I repeat [my invitation] for the fourth time. We need the private sector. We have been proven incompetent in management in the last 40 years,” he said. 

He added that new factories would collapse again if the same course of “borrowing” for development continues. 

“We do not want to return to devastation,” El-Sisi said, referring to the state’s conditions in the past in 2011. 

He said the country was only “saved by God from the devastation and destruction”, stressing that Egyptians should “never forget [what happened] in 2011”. 

He vowed the inviolability of workers’ rights during the reform process in public enterprise companies, adding that the state Is bearing the burdens of reforms being implemented in the companies.  

El-Sisi's statements came during his inspection of Kima’s Ammonia and Urea Complex in Aswan as part of an extensive inspection tour since the start of the week to Upper Egypt’s developmental projects. 

The EGP 12 billion mega plant has a production capacity of 1,200 tonnes and 1,575 tonnes per day of ammonia and urea respectively.

It aims to fill the gap in the ammonia market, and establish an integrated industrial city in Aswan.

Public enterprise minister Hisham Tawfik said Egypt’s the sixth biggest producer and fifth biggest exporter of urea, with production estimated at 6.7 million tons of urea annually, with local consumption set at 2.9 million tons and exports at 3.8 million tons. 

He said local production of ammonium nitrate was estimated at 1.1 million tons in 2020, with consumption of 1 million tons locally. 

Egypt’s exports of fertilizers is estimated at approximately nine percent of total exports, he said.