Electronic Commerce Organizations and Initiatives

    The e-commerce sector of the Egyptian economy is still in its formative stages, with interested organizations, both public and private, attempting to promote the potential of this new field to the Egyptian business community.  Amongst the organizations and their activities in support of e-commerce:

    The  Internet Society of Egypt established the E-commerce Committee (ISE/E2C) in October 1997.  Its objective is to promote Egyptian business and governmental e-commerce awareness.  The committee co-sponsored the first national seminar on Egyptian e-commerce in September 1998. (El-Nawawy)

    The National E-commerce Committee under the Ministry of Trade was founded in early 1999.  This committee was responsible for lobbying government ministries and critical decision-makers to gain support for a national electronic commerce initiative. Such an initiative was declared in September 1999 by the Ministry of Trade at a national information technology conference.  This declaration is to be followed by a national e-commerce action plan in order to implement the above initiative. (Ibid.)

E-commerce Activity

    Actual e-commerce activity reflects the newness of this business model and its experimental nature in the Egyptian market.  In mid-1998, only ten websites were equiped to offer some level of transactional back office and clearance mechanism to provide some form of Internet enabled acquisition of goods/services. (Ibid.)

 Business to Consumer (b-to-c)

    In cotrast to the the above ten sites, the majority of Egypt’s current business to consumer internet offerings are a one-dimensional web presence combined with a catalog of company products or services.  In general, the businesses engaged in b-to-c activity reflect the small and family-owned nature of the Egyptian private sector.  As  such, most Egyptian business sites would involve the marketing of small consumer products such as flowers, Egyptian artifacts and software. 

Business to Business/Administration (b-to-b/a)

    In spite of the Egyptian government’s commitment to a market-led private sector economy, a majority of the commercial and financial sectors remain in the public sector.  As such, fifty-seven percent of overall procurement in the Egyptian economy remains within government operations.  Because of the size and depth of the public sector on Egypt’s economic and finacial activities, this sector represents the greatest potential for achieving the benefits of b-to-b/a at both a micro- and macro-economic level. However, the number of e-commerce attempts from the government and the public sector has been negligible.  Nonetheless, there have been several e-commerce projects on the b-to-b level, which are still in the preliminary phase of operation: 

1. Damietta and Portsaid Containers Handling & Cargo Companies: These projects demonstrate the use of EDI over the Internet at two Egyptian ports.  The companies have secured business with the largest five shipping lines worldwide. 
2. Egyptian Aluminum Co.: This is one of the largest public enterprise sector companies in Egypt, which produces 1% of the world’s aluminum.  The company processes its requests for proposals over the Internet.
3. Capital Exchange: This project is a stock-trading system over the Internet, which links all the trading community of brokers with any potential investor in the world; therefore, providing a better mechanism for trade in the Egyptian stock market. 
4. Banking: Several banks in Egypt have only currently taken initiatives to incorporate remote banking, Intranet banking and home banking on different levels. (Ibid.)

E-commerce Obstacles

The above organizations and companies do not pursue e-commerce in a vacuum, in order for these efforts to coalesce into a national e-commerce business transformation a number of obstacles must be overcome.