Focus on Targeting the Egyptian Market for Defense Industry Exports

Minister of National Defense Seo Wook is holding a defense minister meeting with Mohamed Ahmed Zaki Mohamed, Minister of National Defense of Egypt.

[Asia Economy Yang Nak-gyu, Military Specialist Reporter] Our military has decided to strengthen defense and defense industry cooperation with Egypt. This is a strategic move to expand not only civilian exports to Egypt but also Egypt's defense material exports.

On the 1st, the Ministry of National Defense announced that Minister of National Defense Seo Wook held talks with the Egyptian Minister of Defense to discuss ways to develop defense and defense industry cooperation between the two countries.

Minister Seo, who is visiting Egypt, held a three-hour meeting including lunch with Mohamed Ahmed Zaki Mohamed, Egypt's Minister of Defense, in Cairo the previous day (local time). Minister Zaki explained specific areas of defense cooperation he hopes to pursue with Korea and stated that Egypt regards Korea as a strategic cooperation partner.

In response, Minister Seo said he would support not only the ongoing defense industry cooperation issues between the two countries but also future-oriented defense cooperation.

Domestic defense companies are also increasing their export volumes to Egypt. In 2010, SNT Heavy Industries signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the export of defense machine tools with Helwan Machinery & Equipment (hereafter Helwan), a state-owned enterprise under Egypt's Ministry of Defense. Since then, they have supplied machine tools worth about 20 million dollars to Helwan.

Hyundai Rotem signed a contract worth 100 billion won in June with the Egyptian National Railways for the sale and supply of signal modernization projects (Nag Hammadi-Luxor section). They also signed an MOU with the Egyptian state-owned railway company to manufacture and supply approximately 840 electric trains for lines 1, 2, 3, and 6.

The Korean government’s position is to significantly increase defense exports following civilian exports. Egypt has traditionally imported weapons from the United Arab Emirates. As of 201, it relied on imports for 65.6% of armored vehicles, 27.4% of aircraft, and 6.7% of naval vessels.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi expressed his anticipation for President Moon’s official visit to Egypt at the earliest possible date, hoping that this would lead to concrete discussions to establish a comprehensive cooperative partnership between the two countries. He also expressed hope that the ongoing defense cooperation would achieve early results and develop into future-oriented cooperation that goes beyond conventional forces to include advanced science and technology.

Following his visit to Egypt, Minister Seo plans to visit Oman to hold talks with Said Saif bin Tariq bin Taimur Al Said, Prime Minister of the Ministry of Defense, and inspect quarantine measures directly on board the Cheonghae Unit 35th ship, Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin, which is scheduled to call at Oman for military logistics support, before returning to Korea on the 3rd.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.