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Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

> from the UAE, purchasing a city for $35 billion

Ras al-Hekma for those curious. It sounds like a terrible deal on all sides. It's a bad vehicle for UAE money, it leaves Egypt with "35% guaranteed profits" on a planned city, and the UN is busily green washing the entire affair to curry political favor.

> concerns about how these funds are managed

Egypt seems completely squeezed. It's uniquely impacted by both the war on Ukraine and Gaza with the IMF having to step in and give them $3 billion later upgraded to $8 billion in emergency relief. The money is going to evaporate. My concern is there won't be any local economy or businesses left under these policies when it all dries up.

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> Ras al-Hekma for those curious. It sounds like a terrible deal on all sides

It actually makes sense.

Most tourism in Egypt comes from Eastern Europeans (especially Russians and Ukrainians), for whom Sharm al-Sheikh is their Cabo.

If you've looked at a map, it's also located in Sinai, where there's an ongoing Muslim Brotherhood turned IS insurgency (which also enflamed neighboring Gaza).

Moving resort tourism to much more defensible Ras al-Hekma works, and the UAE being the New York of the region had enough capital to co-invest to develop it (also didn't hurt to help line up politicians pockets).

And Egypt (with UAE, Saudi, and some Indian capital) has been building out alternatives like Siwa. I actually chatted a eco-lodge owner from Siwa while I was stuck at a layover in Istanbul Airport - a lot of their tourism it now targeting the domestic market, Gulf market, some western hippy types, and Indians.

> My concern is there won't be any local economy or businesses left under these policies when it all dries up

The Egyptian economy is stabilizing and UAE, Saudi, Chinese, and Indian money is flowing in as FDI [0], and pushing reforms accordingly.

Heck, Egypt's GDP Growth Rate in FY22 was 6.6% according to the World Bank, and has always been between 2.5-6% post-coup.

[0] - https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/can-egypts-economic-overhaul-st...

Ras el-Hekma is to the west of Alexandria, nowhere close to the Sinai.

They said Sharm al-Sheikh was in Sinai.

> where there's an ongoing Muslim Brotherhood turned IS insurgency (which also enflamed neighboring Gaza).

Is that Google AI search hallucinations? MB does not have anything to do with Sinai. There were insurgency fueled by several factors (some of them related to your normal normal Military Dictatorship)

> If you've looked at a map, it's also located in Sinai

I don't think you looked yourself in the map. It is located on the other side of Egypt. To the west of Alexandria.

> Moving resort tourism to much more defensible Ras al-Hekma works

More defensible? You really need to cross almost all of northern Egypt (practically invading it) to reach Ras- Elhekma from Sinai.

> And Egypt (with UAE, Saudi, and some Indian capital) has been building out alternatives like Siwa

I am not sure if by building out alternative you mean developing tourism destination because Siwa as a place where people live and flourish existed and was part of Egypt for thousands of years.

They commented Sharm al-Sheikh, not Ras el-Hekma, was in Sinai.

They commented that Ras el-Hekma is a more defensible location than Sharm al-Sheikh in general terms... which you seem to agree with based on your comment about needing to invade Northern Egypt to get to aras el-Hakem.

isn't 8 billion dollars like 4 miles of NYC subway? [0] in the grand scheme of bailouts and liquidity injections it doesn't sound all that critical to me.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-23/in-nyc-su...

Isn't the GDP of NYC alone 3x that of the entire country of Egypt? Yes.

The better question is what fraction of their GDP is this loan? Well, 1.6%. It's notable because while taking IMF loans has been a revolving door policy with Egypt this is the largest yet and the size was increased once already. It's being billed as an emergency loan because it is.

Egypts debt load has tripled over the past year or two and they're stuck at a 10% deficit that's slowly crippling the country.

I had some sense there would be a difference in GDP there, I appreciate the figure. I forget that deficits are different when you owe the money to someone other than yourself.

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