Elevating Policy To Modernise And Mobilise Trade

Challenge

In order to support the Government of Egypt’s ambitious plans to increase the country’s exports, USAID designed a project focused on trade facilitation and export development. As part of a consortium led by Nathan Associates, CID Consulting was tasked with engaging the private sector as a key driver of export growth through building the capacity of SMEs to export, as well as supporting in export marketing to ensure Egyptian firms were able to successfully leverage on export opportunities and address export market needs.

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Approach

Our participation in the project was twofold – working with the governmental entities involved – in facilitating trade and export, and working directly with Egyptian SMEs to increase their export portfolios. As part of the first component, we provided relevant Ministries with a series of holistic interventions designed to upgrade their capacity to support export and trade activities.

These ministries included the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Investment. In the realm of private sector development, we worked across the entire value chain of equipping local SMEs with resources, processes, systems, and support required to access export markets. This includes designing the selection criteria for SMEs to access the technical assistance provided by the program, communication and outreach to source and select the SMEs, diagnostic assessments to identify the core needs of selected SMEs, and finally implementing firm-level interventions in a wide variety of areas including strategic planning, process re-engineering, human resource development, organizational design, branding and marketing.

Results

As a result of our support, several new buyers expressed interest in working with food processing SMEs in the program and importing their food products from Egypt. Throughout the project, we reached over 2,000 senior business figures, of which 585 were women, in topics including market research and trade data analysis and the importance of international certifications. As a testament to its success, export competitiveness of 90 SMEs across the engineering, automotive, food processing and textiles and ready-made garments sectors increased by an average of 40% and opened new markets.

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

I have a positive experience working with CID for the last four years in the frame of a consortium between GFA Consulting Group and CID; implementing one component for the GIZ Labour Market Access Project to help improve the quality of employment in small and medium enterprises. CID is known as a professional consulting firm specialized in coordinating and implementing development cooperation projects. In our partnership, CID has provided the project with the staffing needs which is key for the successful execution of the project. All the proposed experts are professional and competent experts who work in a variety of technical and capacity building related fields such as strategic planning, organizational development, marketing and branding, facilitation and trainings. CID is further reputable for managing staff and expert contracts in compliance with the relevant labor, tax and insurance laws. Lastly, the CID staff is positive, engaging and cooperative to work with.

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Maha El Moaz
Team Leader, GFA Consulting Group

Citibank Egypt would like to express its deep appreciation of CID’s dedicated team for their support, passion, integrity, and high quality work that was demonstrated over the last year. From downturn to crisis, CID has challenged every misperception on the bank with guided impactful communication strategies that were taken to action towards transforming the downs to up, and adversary to ally.

Having CID as our partner, advising us in unpredictable times has helped us maintain trust and transparency with the media and our clients, which has helped secure Citi’s stand in the market and ensured positive brand perception and coverage worth of millions.

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Lamise Negm
Vice Chairman, Citibank Egypt