Cleopatra Group Founder Mohamed Aboul Enein believes that localities are the locomotives for development. They are the most capable of knowing each town’s potentials and needs, and they are the entities that can deliver development revenues to citizens in cities, villages and hamlets.
Aboul Enein raised a few questions before proposing his ideas The governor is the president of the governorate he is assigned to govern. Is the authority granted to the governor balanced with the responsibility he bears? Does he have the financial resources to enable him to play his role, or does the governorates ’budget depend 80% on the subsidy that he gets from the general budget? Is his opinion taken when preparing the state’s annual plan? Are the needs of each governorate, city and village recognized when preparing the general plan for the state?
Is the current administrative division of the governorates based on a longitudinal basis that enables the governors to carry out development work in their governorates, or do we need to divide Egypt on an occasional basis that helps spread the population outside the valley and the delta to the new development areas?
As this process will allow the presence of marine outlets for the different governorates and provide development back to the governorates that can It planned to accommodate the population increase away from agricultural land.
The local administration’s tax share of no more than 942 million pounds, that is, less than one per thousand of the total tax revenue in the public budget of 965 billion pounds.
Moreover, the share of investments directed to the governorates in all governorates amounts to 19.4 billion pounds, out of the total investments amounting to 280 billion pounds, or 7%.
Here Are Aboul Enein’s 7 Alternatives to enforce developments in governorates:
1- Create competition between governorates to encourage investment in their governorates. He was awarded the Local Government Efficiency Award for the local authority that excels in the ability to innovate and improve the service provided to the citizen.
2- Speed the development of human resources in governorates and the establishment of a high school of administration to graduate local hr experts, as is the case with some countries.
3- Increasing the governorates ’budgets, not by relying on supporting the general budget, but through local funding sources, and through real estate taxes. Allocating the largest part of the value-added tax to localities and enabling the localities to move with sufficient flexibility between the various aspects of spending.
4- Issuing the Local Administration Law to support financial and administrative decentralization and increase the powers of governors while setting new standards for performance evaluation.
5- Setting an investment map for each specific province, on which opportunities are available, on the basis of productive specialization, according to its natural resources and capabilities.
6- Providing each governorate with an annual plan within the framework of a future vision and a follow-up program in order to achieve the goals of this plan and vision.
7 – Activating the ideas of economic and planning regions, which combine several governorates with great capabilities and resources and are able to depend on themselves economically and redistribute the population between the population and the land, as the governorates of the low population are large in size and vice versa.
