05/08/1996
Al-Alam Alyom Newspaper 1996/AUGUST /05
Some of Egypt’s public business companies have been taken over by their own staff. Some local industrialists and businessmen disapproved of this controversial move, while others welcomed it, saying it could bring about good results. Those in favor explained how and why such a step could prove to be successful, also based on others’ experiences. (Available in Arabic- German in PDF)
Some of Egypt’s public business companies have been taken over by their own staff. The experiment raised many questions, mainly if such a step would be successful and whether it could be applied to all companies. An economic expert stressed that this kind of privatization could be successful only if the use of resources was rationalized and the different conditions of each and every firm and enterprise were taken into consideration. Some of the interviewees were optimistic about this sort of experience. One of them, for example, stressed that such a step allowed turnover to go directly to workers rather than the government. Yet, an Egyptian industrialist, Dr. Nader Riad, disapproved of companies being taken over by their own staff, and described such a step as a mere “emotional uprising”. He said this might end up creating enormous companies “with an unsuitable brain”, as their new owners (the workers themselves) were not sufficiently skilled to run them.