Preliminary Analysis

The Arab Republic of Egypt has had a historically stable economy and for most of 2000s had an increasingly growing economy. This was greatly due to the reforms that took place during the 1990s and continued to boost the economy through 2004 while the Egyptian government began to make a concerted effort to improve their economy. Egypt reduced taxes as well as gave government funding to projects designed to increase the country’s overall economy and implement an infrastructure that would help to increase Egypt’s competitiveness in trading and standings in the worldwide economy.

These economic changes paid off as it was shown when through 2005-2008 Egypt raised the GPD rate to 7%. However, Egypt suffered a blow during the worldwide financial crisis and the GPD rate dropped to around 4% as a result in 2009. The drop in 2009 was mainly due to neglect of funding to major economic infrastructures such as tourism and affected exports and trade due to lack of funding to manufacturing. Since that time Egypt has begun to raise the GPD rate again and is growing at a rate of 5.3% ranking Egypt 49th in the world. Egypt has managed to despite the worldwide economic crisis sustain a growing economy as it bounces back from the economic drop that was suffered in 2009.

PROJECT TITLE: Revitalization of the Egyptian Tourism Industry

Primary Project Category: Tourism
Secondary Project Category: Economic, Public Health, Social Reform, and Infrastructure

Overview

Egypt throughout the country has many fascinating tourist attractions that if improved would become a huge source of revenue for the entire country. Egypt has not taken as much advantage of tourism as possible in the past few years despite the numerous sites it has such as the great pyramids, temples, parts of the holy land, and the Nile River, and a rich cultural and historical element in which tourists could explore ancient Egypt. Egypt to increase the tourism market within the country and attract more travelers begin to implement more tourism-related infrastructure such as creating more museums on historical Egypt which would be an excellent tourist attraction along with improving and modifying the current sites of historical significance. The Great Egyptian Pyramids would be another main focus of improving the business of tourism within Egypt. The Pyramids contain a historical element and would be included in tours and shown to be various tour groups would be a large source of revenue for the country.

Egypt is the perfect vacation area with already with many historical elements along with other generic tourist attractions such as scuba diving, snorkeling, golf, and beach vacations. With the help of the World Bank Egypt would like to improve its tourism infrastructure and begin to train more citizens for careers in the tourism business to increase the current size of the industry and to begin attracting more travelers.

Economic Benefits

The economic benefits that the increased tourism industry would bring to Egypt are astronomical. The boost in tourism would greatly increase the amount of money this industry would be funding for the economy with all the different aspects the industry of tourism brings through hotels, historical sights, and other varied tourist attractions this would allow the industry to become a larger part of the economy as well as a steady flow into the economy. This would also allow Egypt to continue to grow its economy and begin to deal with internal and external debt and create an even more stable economy. With already lower internal and external debts Egypt may be able to repay the loan more efficiently also do to the economic increase that tourism will provide for this country.

Not only would the infrastructure tourism itself provides but it would provide a large source of jobs for the citizens of Egypt in numerous areas of tourism. This would be another huge advantage of increasing the tourism industry in Egypt because despite the fact that Egypt has maintained a growing economy many Egyptians still live quite poorly. By increasing the tourism industry it also increases the number of jobs that could now be provided for those citizens in need. This would also help the social well being of the citizens because by providing jobs and lifting citizens out of poverty it also lowers the risk of the citizens becoming ill and promoting a healthier population. It would also help to lower the unemployment rate which as of 2010 was 9.7% placing Egypt 108th in the world. With the increase of jobs that would be provided form the tourism market Egypt would most likely lower the rate of unemployment and reach standing between 50-100 amongst other countries. These jobs would not only lower the unemployment rate but also lower the amount of Egyptians living below the poverty line that as of 2005 was 20%.

Objectives

1.     To improve tourism infrastructure such as historical landmarks and, museums, and other tourist attractions in Egypt by January 1, 2023 We hope to begin to improve the tourist attractions currently in place in Egypt and then begin to start to build new tourist attractions, museums to increase the jobs as well as make Egypt a more attractive tourist destination.

2.     To increase the number of jobs created by the new infrastructure for tourism and decrease the unemployment rate to 5% by 2023 and decrease it to 3% by 2025. The improved tourism infrastructure will create a bigger tourist industry in Egypt and this will increase the number of jobs that open up. The tourism industry should continue based on the plan to improve and raise the standards of tourism as the tourism industry grows the jobs should too significantly lowering the unemployment rate.

3.     To effectively maintain the successful tourism industry we hope to create through government and World Bank funding so that the industry will help to successfully fund the economy back to a pre-global crisis level. Once the new tourism infrastructure has been established the Egyptian government will be able to maintain a successful tourism market within the country. This will once fully established help provide a steady cash flow to the economy in a market that should continue successfully and be sustained until Egypt reaches the economy it had in the past pre-global financial crisis and surpass that and help the economy continue to grow.

Rationale

The World Bank should seriously consider this proposal because Egypt has demonstrated in past years since the global economic crisis that it has the means to increase the success of the economy by focusing and strongly funding different projects within the country. If given the funds Egypt will be able to sustain this project because they will employ the citizens who do not currently have jobs due to economic crisis. The government will enforce the proper distribution of funds to ensure that they are being used for the sole purpose of improving the tourism industry in Egypt. These projects will in no way harm the government or endanger any species or citizens, this project will only impact the tourist industry and the improvement of the economy. A large amount of the population will benefit from this project because it will completely raise the economy for years to come and help to lower the number of citizens living below the poverty line and create an overall more stable country economically from which the entire population will benefit. Egypt will monitor the progress to the World Bank by sending yearly reports on the tourism industry which will show significant improvement in the revenue that Egypt will be taking in also the progress will be able to monitor by the yearly unemployment rates as well as an improvement in the GPD after this industry has become more stable as well as created more jobs and improved the Egyptian economy.