CAIRO: Xceed, a call center owned by Telecom Egypt, celebrated the achievement of a performance certification from the leading authority on call center operations this week, while a company official tells The Daily Star Egypt that the government will subsidize similar certification for other call centers. The Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC) is based in …

CAIRO: Rumors of the sale of Egypt s sole tobacco producer have been rampant for months. Citing unnamed sources, Britain s Sunday Times reported last December that several multinational cigarette makers were considering a bid for the government s 53 percent stake in Eastern Tobacco. The newspaper stated that British American Tobacco, Altria Group, which …

LONDON: Canada-based oil and gas explorer Centurion Energy International Inc said on Monday Shell was to take a 50 percent interest in two Centurion-operated exploration concessions in the Nile Delta. Centurion, which is listed in Toronto and on London s junior Alternative Investment Market (AIM), said Shell would make an initial payment of $15 million …

CAIRO: The fourth Business Roundtable with the Egyptian government, a turnkey event attended by the country’s government and business leaders, will take place this year on April 2, 2006. An intensely interactive day of discussions and debates on government policy and future plans for business, the roundtable is a strategic event at which the Egyptian …

CAIRO: Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif played down the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood to his government s economic reform agenda at a gathering of politicians, diplomats, businesspeople and civil society members on Monday evening. I don t see them as a challenge at all, says Nazif in a debate organized by Egypt s International Economic …

CAIRO: According to the Ministry of Investment, the country has slashed taxes on Indian tea from 30 percent to five percent, thus brightening the future of Indian tea in Egypt by allowing Indian exporters to re-enter the Egyptian market. The largest exporter to Egypt in the early 1980s, India lost its foothold to Sri Lanka …

Institutional investors buying stocks like Orascom Telecom (OT), which have fallen in recent sessions, pushed up the Egyptian market, traders said. Local and foreign institutions were looking for stocks that had strong fundamentals but had fallen to levels considered cheap, the traders said. The benchmark Hermes index rose 1,520.43 points, or 2.7 percent, to 57,177.19 …

CAIRO: The end of the current tax season is near. Companies and their auditors are rushing to meet the deadline of Mar. 31 for finalizing their financial statements in accordance with the Companies Law. These statements will form the foundation for the tax returns that must be filed by April 30, unless an extension of …

CAIRO: Minister of Investment Mahmoud Mohieddin visited the United States for 48 hours late last week to promote investment in Egypt and met with 14 representatives of financial institutions, funds and investment companies. The minister was accompanied by Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, chairman of the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones, and joined members of the …

CAIRO: They called it Black Tuesday. Four days of panic selling on the New York Stock Exchange ended on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 1929 with share prices at only a quarter of their peak earlier that year. The event shocked financial markets around the world and precipitated the Great Depression, and the stock market took 25 …

CAIRO: Visit your nearest Omar Effendi and you will meet staff that behave more like stereotypical civil servants than professional retailers. You ll probably find what you want, more or less; the sheets may not exactly fit your bed and the towel may be too small. And it is clear that a great deal of …

CAIRO: Egypt s stock market recovered on Wednesday from losses with Orascom Telecom, Orascom Construction Industries and Al Ezz Steel Rebars helping it to a higher close. The Hermes index, which shed 4.9 percent on Tuesday, ended 2,637.48 points, or 5 percent, higher at 55,321.05 points. The broader CIBC index rose 7.45 points, or 3.5 …

CAIRO: Egyptian stocks gained ground on Thursday as Gulf markets recovered and confidence rose among retail investors who panicked earlier in the week, brokers said. Telecom Egypt rose 3 percent, with much of the increase coming after news it is raising prices for subscriptions and local calls, they said. The partially privatized company ended at …

CAIRO: Mercedes-Benz will begin building its top-of-the-line car in Egypt by the end of the year, the company announced on Tuesday. Assembly of the S500L will take place in the factory owned by the Egyptian German Automotive Company (EGA), a joint venture between Mercedes-Benz s parent company DaimlerChrysler and National Automotive Company. The factory, located …

CAIRO: The stock market took a sharp dive yesterday as the government s latest public offering, Misr Aluminum, faltered. Stock exchange officials suspended trading at 11 am for half an hour on Tuesday when the price of several shares declined by 20 percent. By the end of the day, the CASE 30 index, which tracks …

CAIRO: While the IT industry in Egypt has been growing by leaps and bounds, thanks to a forceful nudge from the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), computer dealers have not benefited from the boom in the industry. “There are still too many people in Egypt who do not own computers, Amr Sheira, CEO …

CAIRO: EFG-Hermes Holdings shares fell on Sunday and dragged Egypt s stock market lower in a burst of selling by investors not wanting to take part in the investment bank s capital increase, traders said. EFG-Hermes said on Sunday that holders of its stock at the end of the trading session would be able to …

CAIRO: National carrier EgyptAir announced Saturday it is to sell off 20 percent of its shares on the stock market, with the airline s employees given priority to invest. EgyptAir is in the process of selecting an international firm to prepare a study on how the sale, the first by the state-owned company to the …

COPENHAGEN, Denmark: Danish engineering company FLSmidth on Friday received an Egyptian order worth 450 million kroner ($72 million) despite a widespread boycott of Danish products throughout the Arab world over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons. Spanish-Egyptian joint venture Arabian Cement Company placed the order for engineering services and equipment for the construction of a cement plant …

CAIRO: The advertising industry, in all its shapes and forms, is in a tight jam. As consumers become better informed, the traditional methods of advertising and marketing no longer sell. In response, a growing diversified segment of media has cropped up: media buying agencies. While they do not create the campaign (that’s advertising’s job), or …

CAIRO: There is a precious commodity that isn t traded on any exchange. It is more essential than oil and more useful to the maintenance of civilization than any metal. Yet it is also undervalued and overused and the issues relating to its abuse do not rank highly on in the public s list of …

Intro: CAIRO: On the second day of his visit to Egypt, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said yesterday that while he is mystified by the dearth of his country s investment in Egypt, it is likely to be the result of a lack of information about Egypt amongst South Korean companies. Roh adds that Egypt …

EL-ARISH, Egypt: Egypt has discovered a new natural gas field in the northern Sinai, the local government announced Tuesday. The state oil company Petrobel uncovered the field near the Sinai village of Ramana, 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of the Suez Canal, said Wahbi Abdullah, the director of production in the North Sinai Governorate. Abdullah …

OSLO: Norway s largest telecoms company Telenor is considering a bid for Egypt s third mobile phone license, spokesman Esben Tuman Johnsen told Reuters on Wednesday. Telenor has been aggressively expanding its network of mobile subsidiaries outside its Nordic base and already operates in eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan and south-east Asia. Egypt is an …

CAIRO: The median overnight interbank rate on the Egyptian pound fell to 8.45 percent on Tuesday from 8.598 percent on Monday as funds maturing into the market outstripped those sought in new auctions, traders said. Maturities today and tomorrow are larger than the auction which is meant to cover them, one of the traders said. …

CAIRO: The Egyptian Vietnamese Joint Committee concluded its second meeting this week after a lull of nine years with the signing of agreements on avoidance of double taxation and tourism cooperation. The committee includes a number of officials from both sides and is headed jointly by Minister of Cooperation Fayza Abul Naga and Vietnam s …

CAIRO: Chairman of the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA), Amr Badawy, announced that bidders with local partners will have more weight than those without and will immediately receive 25 of the 1550 evaluation points. Badawy also denied that having an international partner with over 51 percent is a condition for making a bid. This does …

CAIRO: Retail market leader EFG-Hermes dragged Egyptian stocks down on Tuesday in a market driven by anxieties over a 16 percent decline in the benchmark index over the past five weeks, brokers said. In a market lacking news, small investors watched shares in the investment bank fall and many of them decided to reduce their …

CAIRO: Cairo-based EFG-Hermes Holdings said on Sunday its unaudited 2005 net profit had risen by about 560 percent to between LE 348 million and LE 356 million ($60.73 million and $62.13 million). The firm, which earned LE 52 million in net profit in 2004, said in a statement posted on the Egyptian bourse s Web …

CAIRO: The median overnight interbank rate on the Egyptian pound was 8.6 percent on Monday, little changed from Sunday s 8.583 percent as bankers awaited the result of a 182-day T-bill auction. It s the same levels as yesterday, one banker said of overnight rates. The central bank was auctioning treasury bills worth LE 1.5 …