Egypt’s ministry of trade and industry and Switzerland recently announced scaling up collaboration to strengthen the competitiveness of Egyptian textiles and clothing producers. The aim is to boost exports, create jobs and raise incomes. The new initiative forms part of the three-year Global Textiles and Clothing (GTEX) programme. The partnership for the initiative, ‘Egypt: Improving the International Competitiveness of the Textile and Clothing Sector’, was formalised by Egypt’s minister for trade and industry Amr Nassar and ambassador of Switzerland to Egypt Paul Garnier in Cairo on September 22. GTEX programme is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and is being implemented by the International Trade Centre (ITC), a joint agency of the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. The initiative will also be aligned with the Textiles and Clothing Programme for Selected Middle East and North African countries (MENATEX), which is funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), an ITC press release said. The new project aims to support Egypt to build a sustainable export-oriented sector with increased sales to traditional and new markets, with a focus on creating long-term and sustainable employment, particularly for women and young people. ITC will implement the project in close partnership with the Egyptian Textiles, Apparel & Home Textiles (TA&HT) Export Council. The project is aligned with several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, Goal 5 of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls and Goal 9 of building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and fostering innovation.
