In the more than a century since it opened, Aswan’s Old Cataract, perched on a rocky outcrop on the Nile River’s eastern bank, has welcomed the likes of Winston Churchill, Jimmy Carter and Tsar Nicholas II. For Agatha Christie, in whose former suite you can now stay for upwards of $8,000 a night, it was the inspiration for one of her most famous works of detective fiction, Death on the Nile.
Digging out of its worst economic crisis in decades, Egypt is putting prized assets up for sale, and the rising powers of the Gulf region are taking out their checkbooks. Over the past nine months, high-profile visitors from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as the UAE, have been sighted up and down the Nile and on the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts. Their coffers flush with oil and gas revenue, the delegations have been scoping out the investment deals of a century.
The Ras El-Hekma pact represents a whole other order of magnitude. The UAE is pumping in funds equivalent to 7 percent of the UAE’s gross domestic product. That commitment shows “a new attitude that looks at the return from such economic interventions and tries to reach a win-win formula,” says Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, a former Egyptian deputy prime minister and ex-chief of its investment authority.
Saudi Arabia is jostling with the UAE to be the region’s trendsetter, but it’s been holding back. Concerns over the valuation of Cairo-based United Bank, rooted in the uncertain trajectory of Egypt’s beleaguered pound, led the nation to withdraw from acquisition talks last year. But after the UAE’s Ras El-Hekma deal, Saudi Arabia is looking afresh at its own plan to develop a premium stretch of beachfront near Sharm El-Sheikh on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Bloomberg reported in March.
Luxury certainly defines Egypt’s northern coast, a stretch of golden beachfront running west of Alexandria toward the Libyan border. Long a favorite with wealthier Egyptians who summer in villas or apartments in exclusive gated compounds, the area is little visited by Western tourists, despite azure waters that are a match for almost anywhere else on the Mediterranean.
Philippines Latest News, Philippines Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: gmanews - 🏆 11. / 68 Read more »
Source: MlaStandard - 🏆 20. / 55 Read more »
DMW bans seafarers on Red Sea, Gulf of AdenThe Department of Migrant Workers prohibited the deployment of Filipino seafarers on passenger and cruise ships traveling through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as threats to shipping in the region worsens.
Source: PhilstarNews - 🏆 1. / 94 Read more »
Source: BusinessMirror - 🏆 19. / 59 Read more »
Source: rapplerdotcom - 🏆 4. / 86 Read more »
Source: gmanews - 🏆 11. / 68 Read more »