In the past half a century, Egypt has experienced remarkable progress in the provision of infrastructure in all areas, including transportation, telecommunication, power generation, and water and sanitation. Judging from an international perspective, Egypt has achieved an infrastructure status that closely corresponds to what could be expected given its national income level, as well as contributed to the progress in social and economic well-being of its citizens. The present infrastructure status is the result of decades of purposeful investment.
In the past 15 years, however, a worrisome trend has emerged: Infrastructure investment has suffered a substantial decline, which may be at odds with the country’s goals of raising economic growth. Improving infrastructure in Egypt would require a combination of larger infrastructure expenditures and more efficient investment. In the last years there has been a slowdown or even a decline in some areas of infrastructure, particularly power generation and transportation.
Associated with this decline, capital expenditures in Egypt have been reduced in the last decade, raising concerns that the country may have reached an unsustainably low level of infrastructure investment.
Egypt has had a high share of public investment in infrastructure even among MENA countries.
Over the last few decades, however, public infrastructure investment in Egypt has been falling, and the decline in public investment has not been compensated by a rise in private investment.
Private participation in infrastructure investment in the MENA region declined in the 2000s compared to the 1990s and in fact, its cumulative investment for 1990-2001 is smaller than other regions, even smaller than Sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank (2003) concludes that the MENA region especially suffers from an unfavourable investment environment that prevents private participation in the last decade.
Jordan has good infrastructure including an extended network of permanent roads, a seaport at Aqaba, three international airports capable of handling modern freight planes and a number of grain storage silos. A modern information and communications technologies (I.C.T) sector has been established in recent years and estimated 96 percent of all households have telephone, 40 percent with home computers and Internet connection and 98 percent are connected to the national electricity grid. It is considered an excellent base to build up a viable agro-industries sector that has regional implications. No other regional country has such advanced I.C.T facilities.
Jordan has a reliable and stable banking industry with a variety of services available but, notwithstanding assets of this kind, neither agriculture nor agro-industries have featured as focus for investment. The same holds true for small and medium enterprises investment. Some effort will be required to redirect investment and to take advantage of on-going efforts to simplify financial business practices, complex laws, and cumbersome regulations. The private sector has become recognized as a leading service provider – in the financial sector and elsewhere within industry, and is expected to take an increasing role with the shift to an open market economy. The country is well served with a stable and technically skilled labour force that is generally cheaper than that of neighbouring countries.
Infrastructure policies in Lebanon aims at the following :
Develop the transport, energy, water and information society sectors and networks through sector liberalisation, investment in infrastructures and interconnection with EU networks.
Identify the priority infrastructure projects in various sectors as well as addressing financing issues;
develop land and water resources for the purposes of increasing farmers' incomes and protecting the environment through land terracing and harvesting of runoff water in small hill ponds; Agricultural Development Fund (ADF). The main components of intervention are the machinery equipment of farms, land and irrigation schemes improvement, intensification of animal production, development of agriculture and the fight against climate hazards, the drought in particular.
In 2008, the amount of grants and premiums totalled nearly 1595 million dirham. This amount increased by 75% compared to 2007 due to a revaluation of 76% for grants. Of a total of nearly 1393 million dirham subsidy, the share of hydro-agriculture (including drip irrigation which is granted 60% to 100% and land improvements amounted to 41.1% with an increase of almost 130% over 2007. It is followed by that of the equipment of farms (35.8% of the total grants), livestock intensification (9.3%), use of improved cereals seeds (7.1%) and the promotion of agricultural exports (4.4%).
As regards the premiums granted to producers, equipment for livestock is the main component of the ADF budget with 70.2 million dirham in 2008, nearly 48.5% of the awarded total. Crop trees development is second with 35.7 million dirham premium. Citrus, olive trees and date palms are the most targeted and producers can benefit from an installation orchards premium that varies between 1800 and 7800 dirham per hectare. The total premium paid on the purchase of tractors fell by slightly more than 88.5%, which is contrary to the expected objectives in terms of mechanization of farms. Such an observation has contributed to upward revision of subsidies to producers for mechanical equipment and irrigation equipment from 2008.
Other ADF interventions are part of the government efforts against natural hazards. The main actions in this regard relate to support for agricultural insurance to secure grain production, the backup and protection of livestock during drought and locust control. In 2009, commitments granted by the FDA for these actions amounted to almost 380 million dirham.
In addition to the benefits granted under the FDA, the Moroccan agricultural sector continues to be exempt from income tax until 2013. Although the deadline approaches, the discussion around the subject of tax exemption does not appear in the agenda and nothing can prove or disprove its continuation beyond that date.
Tunisia has a fairly adequate public agricultural infrastructure, as compared to similarly natural resource endowed countries. Access to most areas is fairly decent but requires maintenance, in most cases. Perhaps among the most lacking aspects of infrastructure in Tunisia is the one that could facilitate marketing services (internal and external). This includes transport means and refrigeration centres to store, package agricultural produce and mitigate marketing power that may prevail on agricultural markets. The provision of such services may require the input and collaboration of farm operators through the setting up, and/or activation, of farm organizations.
Such a rehabilitation of farm organizations could turn out to be very critical as national agricultural exports are confronted with increasing competition as well as qualitative restrictions from world markets. Meeting these challenges could be facilitated through collective work effort.
In Turkey, the General Services Support Estimate (GSSE) indicator entails transfers whose aim is to improve the functioning and competitiveness of the agricultural sector. The transfers are non-commodity specific and do not accrue directly to individual farmers and include policy measures, such as investments in research and development, agricultural schools, infrastructure, marketing and promotion, and public stockholding. In Turkey, GSSE support to the agricultural sector has been low and declining in importance over time. The share of support to general services in total support to agriculture decreased from 8% in 1986-88 to 5% in 2007-09, and remained far below the OECD average of 23%. In general, transfers to general services are considered relatively benign, with a potential for distortion that is deemed lower than transfers to producers. By contrast, in Turkey, a key feature of the support to general services is that it has consisted largely of bail-out payments to the SEEs and ASCUs.
In particular, the GSSE is dominated by marketing and promotion, which in 2007-09 accounted for as much as 93% of GSSE. The marketing and promotion category is, in turn, comprised of two elements: i) transfers to ASCUs and equity injection from Treasury to SEEs (80% in 2009); ii) duty loss and debts write-offs. During 1995-2002, these payments never fell below 85% of the GSSE, and over the same period they averaged one-third of total support. Even since the reforms in 2001, the cost of financing these organisations continued to require considerable transfers. More specifically, spending for marketing and promotion rose sharply in 2001 due to duty loss and debts write-offs, and again in 2006 and 2009, due to equity injection from the Treasury to SEEs.