In the last six months of 1999, Egypt’s manufacturing sector showed an improvement in performance from the relatively stagnant years of 1998 and early 1999
Although industrial sales and production show a slight trend upwards, investment is not expected to rise in the next six months. This is due to the fact that producers must first deal with high inventories and excess capacity generated over the past year when sales were much lower than expected. Overall, the manufacturing sector’s economic outlook for the first half of 2000 is for slow recovery in the rate of growth.