Egypt's experts in the textile industry have concerns that the establishment of the largest Chinese textile city in the country — known as Mankai Textile Industrial Park — will divert the government's attention from supporting the loss-making local textile industry and from helping it gain competitiveness in the international market.

On Jan. 16, Egypt's Minister of Trade and Industry Amr Nasser announced that China's Ningxia Mankai Investment Co., which has been operating in the textile industry for more than 10 decades, has made an investment of 2.1 billion Egyptian pounds ($121.6 million) to establish the infrastructure for the first phase of the Chinese textile city in Sadat City, north of Cairo.

Nasser said the Armed Forces Engineering Authority has completed about 50% of the construction work in the first phase of the Chinese textile city. The whole city will spread over an area of 3.1 million square meters (1.2 square miles) and house 592 factories.

Negotiations between Egypt and China on building the textile city started in May 2017, and the two sides signed an agreement for establishing it in the industrial city of Sadat on Nov. 5, 2017.