At the invitation of the Egyptian side, Minister Han Changfu met with Mr. Mahmoud El-Sharif, Deputy Speaker of the Egyptian House of Representatives, during his visit to Egypt on the afternoon of 27 April 2017. The two sides exchanged views on strengthening bilateral agricultural cooperation. Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Mr. Song Aiguo attended the meeting.
Minister Han noted that China and Egypt are both ancient agricultural civilizations, sharing great similarity and complementarity in agricultural development. The two sides should improve cooperation mechanism, maintain candid communication and expand common ground to achieve mutual benefits and win-win outcomes. Minister Han suggested that both sides enhance cooperation in areas of improvement and breeding of main crops, joint development of animal vaccines, dry farming and water-saving technology, protected agriculture, agricultural machinery, personnel training, as well as agricultural trade and investment. China hoped the Egyptian side could provide favorable policies and create an enabling environment to facilitate Chinese investments in Egypt.
Mr. El-Sharif expressed his appreciation and welcome to Minister Han and said that China, a great agricultural country, has made remarkable achievements in agricultural development over the past decades. Egypt hopes to draw experience from China to energize its agriculture. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and the Egyptian society highly value cooperation with China. While implementing the 1.5 Million Feddan Project for land reclamation, Egypt earnestly anticipates that China could strengthen cooperation with Egypt and other countries along the Belt and Road to promote common agricultural development. The Egyptian Parliament is willing to extend stronger support and assistance to China-Egypt cooperation.
During the stay, Minister Han visited Chinese enterprises in Egypt and family farms in the irrigated area of the Nile River.