After the election of the President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin called him and wished him luck “solving complex and large-scale problems of enhancing national solidarity and promoting economic reforms”. Moscow is not apparently scared by the election of Islamist, because Morsi has already promised to comply with all the obligations taken by Cairo earlier and even to do his best in order to attract as many tourists as possible to the Red Sea shore.
According to Alaa El Hadidi, the Ambassador of Egypt to Russia, “after the revolution, the Egyptian economy was in crisis. Our reserves substantially declined. The Egyptian exchange index fell during this time. For us, a very interesting and pleasant surprise was that, after the publication of the election results and the announcement of the winning candidate in the presidential elections of the Egyptian elections, this index gained a lot of points and rose to an unprecedented level. Within three days, i. e. from the date of the publication of the election results, the Egyptian Stock Exchange received a profit amounting to 32 billion Egyptian pounds. On the day of the announcement of the election results, the Egyptian index rose to an unprecedented level in its history. According to experts, the Egyptian stock exchange and the Egyptian index compensated for 25% of its losses since the beginning of the revolution in three days. I can say that this is the best indicator of the fact that strong optimism prevails in the country at the moment, and that the people have high hopes and expectations due to these elections; they are completely sure that we are moving in the right direction. If you watched TV on the day of the declaration of the results of the Egyptian elections, you could see that not thousands, but millions of people went on to the streets of Egyptian cities and were happy that we had been able to hold democratic elections. We already have our first president of the country to be elected in free elections after the revolution”.
Commenting on the situation in tourism, El Hadidi said: “I've read and heard lately that there are many concerns of various representatives of Russian society about what will happen to tourism in the context of the new political situation in the country. Watching what is happening now in the economic market and in the stock exchange, I can say that there is no good reason for these concerns at the moment, especially for those which have been spread in the last 2-3 months. As you know, several weeks ago the Egyptian government decided to abolish visa fees for Russian tourists visiting our country. I think the government has taken this decision confident that the number of tourists in the country will not stop but , on the contrary, will increase, and this decision was made to support tourist traffic. I say once again, Russian tourists who come to our country will receive a visa free of charge to the end of August. The authorities will not charge any fees, nor will the travel agencies that will guide the tourists to our country. Accordingly, you arrive and get a visa free of charge.
Speaking on the possibility of different restrictions in this sphere (for instance, the prohibition of alcohol trade and bikinis, as well as gender-separate beaches), El Hadidi considered it to be impossible saying: “Turkey is also a Moslem country, but there are not gender-separate beaches in Turkey. Why should they appear in Egypt?”
Meanwhile, according to Alexander Radkov, head of the Federal Agency for Tourism, “Egypt is a popular destination in the Russian market. Last year, 1.45 million Russian tourists visited Egypt. This year, the flow of tourists has begun to actively increase. In particular, active growth in tourist arrivals was registered in the first quarter of this year. Of course, we can not say that it has reached the volume of 2010 yet. For us, it is important that the crises happening now in Egypt have no effect on weakening of state control over safety and the quality of services provided. To this end, we have created a special commission on security, together with our Egyptian colleagues from the Ministry of Tourism; we are constantly monitoring the current situation in the resorts”.
