Jade, that value is perceived by the town authorities but not by actual businesses. If there was a viable need for a shipping hub why wouldn't amazon or someone else just plop down a warehouse there and start operating. Its probably because there are other problems, local corruption, location not as good as local authorities want you to believe, existing port already located elsewhere etc. Towns are formed because there is a need for X and the town people pool resources and provide X. Not the other way around where the town does nothing, hopes somebody gives them X and also hopes somebody needs X which is where Cairo is at. Why cant Cairo take a loan to build their shipping hub? If the hub has a business case I'm sure banks or state/federal gvt would give it to them. More likely the case for this hub sucks, its not viable without a massive government giveaway and Cairo wont even be able to afford to do basic maintenance.
snoo, you may be right. You're probably right. But there's not enough information in the article to be sure. That's why my first comment was that they're not clear enough in what they're asking. But both of us are just guessing about the facts of what's happening there because there aren't enough to determine what's really going on. So I'll play devil's advocate with hypothetical facts that might have played the opposite way that your hypothetical facts played out. I disagree with you about how towns are formed. Towns are formed when the area has something that people want. It's not the people providing the something. In this case, it's access to transportation and shipping. In other cases, it's a business, gold mines, oil fields, etc. When the reason for the town gets outdated as in the case of gold mines, for example, then it's up to the people still in the town to reinvent themselves if they want to stay. They might set up tourist attraction gold mines or other ways for the town to exist. In the case of Cairo, it's still at a geographically advantageous spot. They just need to find a way to make that more attractive to businesses. You're making the assumption that if something was great, people would have already flocked to it. That's not always the case. They may not know it exists or don't realize that people are backing it. Businesses might be overlooking the port because they always have and don't see any reason to change. It takes someone or a group to make the business case that the plan is workable. Then it takes advertising or publicity for other people to find out about it. That's why business start ups are difficult and often require capital. Even if the business has a great product, they have to be able to convince enough other people that the product is good enough to invest in and then convince a whole bunch of other people to buy it. It doesn't necessarily mean they don't have a good product. It might mean that they haven't convinced enough other people of it. There are a lot of good products out there that fail for lack of advertising and a viable business plan. As for the corruption problem, that's less of a problem if they're dealing with businesses than if they're dealing with the government. With the government, there's no oversight. Businesses deal with corruption all the time, even overt corruption that can happen in foreign countries. That's not necessarily a deal breaker. You may be right that Cairo's business case is inadequate for funding. It may also be the case that there's not enough expertise in the town for anyone to have put up an adequate business case. It may just take someone with the expertise to see the value in it and advertise it adequately. As I'm watching the government events lately and the counter-reactions that have been happening, I've become acutely aware that sometimes it just takes people to have knowledge of a problem, understand how it affects them and then to mobilize around the solution. In the case of Cairo, it may be that there's not a solution or it may be that people haven't mobilized around the problem. There are not enough facts in the article to know either way.