Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly held a meeting with Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla to follow up on the strategic plans to extract and provide high-quality phosphate ore, the Cabinet announced.

The meeting took place in the presence of Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority (EMRA)’s Chairman Khaled Al Sheshtawy, heads and officials of the Egyptian Company for Mining, Management and Exploitation of Quarries and Salines; and El Nasr Company for Intermediate Chemicals.

The Prime Minister stated that Egypt is working to optimally manage its mineral resources through the extraction and manufacturing of raw materials within the framework of the state’s fixed strategy to benefit from the natural raw materials available in Egypt. This comes in line with the directives of President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, which require the necessity to have an accurate inventory of the quantities of high-quality phosphates in Egypt. These directives also highlight the need to stop the export of raw phosphates and to work on implementing projects that achieve its added value.

Egypt received offers from a number of foreign investors to set up projects that achieve this added value, and therefore accurate studies, numbers, and statistics must be available, in addition to preparing exploratory plans for this high-quality raw material in Egypt, Madbouly noted.

There was also a presentation during the meeting featuring a map of phosphate ore concentration at the local level, which is concentrated in the regions of the Red Sea, the Nile Valley, Abu Tartour, and the differences between the outputs of those regions of phosphate ore.

Additionally, the meeting tackled the status of the strategic reserve of phosphate ore locally, and the percentage of exports thereof.  They also discussed future opportunities with the aim of expanding phosphate production locally to provide the necessary needs of phosphate ore in order to operate the industrial sector, especially phosphate fertilizer factories.