Taken at Sokhana - my first sightings of the Red Sea
Hi everyone
It’s Friday night and Mohamed is out with his friend at the café. Although as I've reported before Egyptian men are very used to "café" society and Masry certainly is, he has decided that one night a week will be fine for him if it is OK with me (much better than 3 or 4 or 5) so Friday night will often be the night I write …
Not a lot of news this time round as I have had some kind of stomach bug most of the week and have kept myself quiet in the house while Masry has been out and about seeing the companies for whom the Coasters have worked and presenting end of month accounts etc. and meeting with the drivers.
A few people have asked me about “the company” I write about and the vehicles. Here’s the story. Towards the end of last year the government announced that they wouldn’t approve any new company licenses for tourism companies in early 2008 and when they did begin to license companies again the fees would be significantly higher. Masry has long had a dream to own his own company working in tourism, beginning with a company that provides transport for tourists (a Level C company). So Masry duly made an application at the beginning of December, only to be told that the doors had already closed and they didn’t know when they would begin to approve applications again.
As well as fees to pay (quite substantial ones in the tens of thousands of US dollars) there are other requirements for a tourism transportation company. You must have a certain amount of money in the bank (200,000 Egyptian pounds) that must stay there for at least a year (I assume as a sort of guarantee), and you must have vehicles that provide over 100 seats. So once you do all this and can operate your company you must prove yourself for at least a year and then you can move up until you eventually can operate a Level A company, which can offer the full range of services, accepting tourists from outside Egypt, selling tickets, providing guided tours etc.
Now, the papers have been lodged with the Ministry of Tourism and the waiting goes on. But meantime there are other things that can be done. To begin with you can purchase vehicles and come to an arrangement with an existing company for them to be registered under their name and umbrella, so to speak. For this you pay several thousands of pounds each year. You also pay all costs associated with the vehicle and employ the driver and you are responsible for finding work for the vehicle. The vehicle wears the name and logos of the sponsoring company (and count towards their seat provision requirements). You take the money direct from the companies for the work done. If you get your own company at some stage the vehicles are then transferred to your name.
So that is what Masry is doing at the moment. To begin with he purchased two Toyota Coasters in January. They have been working since the beginning of March. There is also an order in with Toyota for a Hiace and with Hyundai for 2 H1s, all of which should be here soon, in a matter of a month. The Hiace will be placed with the same company (Mena) while the Hyundais will be placed with a different company (GITS – Gabry Inter Travel Service).
One of the other things that you can do is to buy an existing company (at any level) that someone wants to sell. This may be a company that has been operating as a going concern, or a company that has been approved but has never operated. In each case you really buy the “paper” from the owner. So that has been an ongoing search with the involvement of lawyers and people who work in the government and many others, usually men who know someone who knows someone. Or maybe with the help of a lawyer for an important man or the driver of a government official (or even the driver of the wife of a government official) – all at a price of course. This is Egypt after all.
Several companies have been located but each time Masry comes home and says “Congratulations (Mabrook), now you own a company”, there’s a problem in the next day or so. The seller changes his mind, or the lawyer finds that they owe taxes or have another problem with the government, or the price suddenly goes up out of reach. Masry’s search has been unsuccessful so far.
And there’s a third alternative. An application has been lodged with the lawyer (and government I think) with a fee paid to the lawyer of course, for a Level A company, which is (by all accounts) to be approved in a year’s time. Once the paper is in our hands a further substantial fee is paid to the lawyer along with the licensing fee to the Ministry. So that’s also in train.
To help fill in time while we wait we have also been looking for an office and trying to decide whether to buy now or to rent when the time comes. Currently we are looking on the estate at the new buildings going up on the first street facing the road.
Last weekend the government announced a 30% increase in salaries for those workers for whom it sets the salary scale. That was on the public holiday that as far as I could make out is a little like Labour Day in that it’s for workers. Two days later the government also announced significant increases in taxes and prices on many items, many of 30%+ increases but some less – petrol, oil and diesel, cigarettes, steel, cement, new vehicles, vehicle registration fees to name a few items. The office we looked at on Monday that was 350,000 pounds is today 400,000. We’re having a think about what to do. I’m afraid if we wait another year we’ll never afford to buy. The upside I guess is that the house has gone up significantly in value virtually overnight. It will take a little while to see what effect it will have on food prices and the cost of living in general.
I presume it makes the news in Oz but there is great consternation in many places about the cost of food. The UN has shortfalls in the monies promised to provide food relief in Africa. There were riots in Lebanon yesterday about food prices (although this seems to have now turned quite political between Hesbollah and the government) and there are problems across Africa. There was also a major demonstration in Cairo a few weeks ago about the same issue and about wages.
I don’t see enough news in English to know what the cause of this is exactly – is it all tied up with the situation in the States? I have noticed how the Ozzie dollar and the US dollar are neck and neck, as everything here revolves around US dollars I guess that’s a good thing for me for now. But any food crisis can’t be good for the world as a whole.
Looking forward to seeing some of you when I get home...
Lots of love for now
Lyndall
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