Owners and holders of licenses for new steel factories demanded the Prime Minister to intervene with the Ministry of Petroleum to supply their natural gas requirements so as to complete building their factories. Acting chairman of Red Sea Group Rafik Al-Dhow accused the government of failing to provide the aid necessary for building special electricity generation stations at the factories as included in the license that they have recently obtained from the General Organization of Industrial Development during a visit by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, Minister of Trade and Industry Rashid Mohammed Rashid, Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmy and Suez Governor Saif Al-Din Galal to the new factory of the group in Suez. He addressed the Prime Minister saying: “If no mechanism is laid down to provide the gas required for the five new factories, they will close down.” The Ministry of Trade and Industry had approved granting five licenses for companies producing steel and its ores with a capacity of six million tons and investments of six billion dollars. In a related context, Al-Dhow in a press conference held the dealers responsible for the unjustified rises in domestic prices, pointing out that the factories have reduced their prices over the last two months by LE 2500 although they had a stock of pellets bought for the high price of 1200 dollars per ton. The price at present is 410 dollars. He added: “As prices fell, the dealers refused to take delivery of their quotas from the factories in hope of new reductions in prices. However, with the rise of the prices for permits in Turkey and Syria, the dealers spread rumors about an increase in the prices for the factory deliveries during the present month, leading to pileups of vehicles in front of the factories to get the full quotas. This development also helped to spread rumors about the reduction of production by factories which is untrue.” Al-Dhow called on the banks to finance new distributors particularly in the provinces, as there are only 70 distributors controlling the prices of steel for there. For his part, Gamal Al-Garhy, chairman of the group, said that the factories may resort to fixing their prices during December. Meanwhile, Rashid Mohammed Rashid announced the construction of the first complex for manufacturing components for electricity generating stations from wind energy at investments of up to 1.3 billion pounds providing 1750 jobs. The foundation stone for this project will be made next Wednesday in Suez with German, Chinese, Spanish and Egyptian investments. It will include a plant for producing power from wind turbines and another for producing turbine blades.
