Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has urged the media to shed light on the New Delta projects.
Sisi was speaking on Wednesday at the inauguration of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Complex in Ain Sokhna.
The state is racing against time to prepare the 3.5 million feddans of land reclamation programs in the New Delta, Toshka, and middle Sinai to enter into service soon, Sisi said in remarks carried by Middle East News Agency.
He added that this would contribute to achieving agricultural development.
The president stated that reclaiming 3.5 million feddans – equaling nearly one-third of the existing agricultural land countrywide – required “time, effort, and considerable cost, as well as providing a huge amount of water and fertilizers.”
Sisi went on to say that the state relied on agricultural wastewater to fulfill the project’s needs which cost huge amounts of money.
Moreover, the Egyptian president called on the state bodies to organize field trips for the youths in universities and schools to inspect the accomplished projects.
The president noted that Egypt has not had such a program to add 3.5 million feddans to its cultivated areas over the past thirty or forty years.
“Some people ask why the state is uninterested in industry, but we need a lot of time, effort, and cost to implement industrial projects. A project like the Nitrogen Fertilizer Complex costs around $800 million, excluding land and facility prices," the president explained.
Establishing this complex required providing natural gas, he said, adding that the optimal use of natural gas is not selling it as fuels but integrating it into other industries.
He stated that establishing industrial ventures to meet local needs and the export surplus would take time, noting that the state had prioritized providing electricity and gas in past years.
Sisi further noted that expanding the agricultural lands in Egypt aims to face the high population growth rate. "The population in Egypt hit 20 to 25 million over the past ten years."
He also stressed the need to lower the import bill, by increasing production.
