Egypt’s Minister of Public Enterprise Mahmoud Esmat revealed on Monday that the ministry has completed several studies on establishing new factories in sectors that rely on imports and in industries that suffer from a huge gap between domestic production and consumption. He provided a detailed explanation of the various forms of possible cooperation with the private sector that would help achieve the goals of the Ebda initiative, which was launched in April and aims to develop and localize the Egyptian industry. Esmat submitted project studies to initiative officials during a meeting on Monday that discussed ways to benefit from the program. The studies covered domestic consumption, import volume, availability of raw materials and their locations, energy consumption rates, and industry size at the international level. Esmat confirmed that the ministry’s new strategy stems from the State Ownership Policy Document. This strategy is open to all forms of partnerships and cooperation with the private sector. For their part, the Ebda officials praised the new projects and the thorough studies. They called for holding another meeting to showcase the funding and partnership opportunities offered by some companies. The meeting also discussed projects for establishing factories of soda ash, silicon, glass used in solar cells to generate electricity, car tires, electric vehicles, aluminum, rims, foil, seamless pipes, green ammonia, nitrates, phosphates, paper, cardboard, raw materials for the manufacture of medicines, chlorine factory, and non-explosive factory bulbs.