In order to streamline its 25 state-owned textile companies, Egypt has inked a deal with US-based Werner International. This was revealed by investment minister of Egypt Ashraf Salman.

Egypt’s textile manufacturing sector, which was once a flourishing industry, has gone downhill in the past decades due to use of redundant textile machineries, dating back to 1950s, by the state-owned companies.

With the restructuring of the 25 state-owned textile industry by Werner International, Egypt’s textile industry will get the much-needed boost.

Founded in New York in 1939, Werner international is a management consultancy firm that caters to the world’s textile, apparel and fashion industries, and has a clientele list in 70 countries. It has been working with Egypt for a long time, providing services to the Egyptian government in creating its upstream textile manufacturing base in the 60s and textile sector development strategy in the late 70s. The company’s support to the textile industry had helped Egypt maintain its momentum in the 90s as well. The Company also supported Egypt’s plan to privatize its textile manufacturing companies.

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Commenting on the deal, Ahmed Moustafa, head of the state-owned Holding Company for Textiles said, “The restructuring will start in February and will take 43 weeks to complete.”

In the first 10 months of 2015, the exports of textile, home textiles and readymade garments companies made US $ 2.4 billion, accounting for around 15 per cent of the total non-oil exports, as per the Ministry of Industry and Foreign Trade.

As per the report from the Netherlands Centre for Promotion of Imports from developing countries, the public and private companies from the labour-intensive sector creates around 25 per cent of all industrial jobs in Egypt.