ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the open door economic policy, its meaning, its dimensions and its historical development. It provides some explanations for the apparently sudden shift from controlled development, based on directives, to development based on private initiative, both local and foreign, and on market forces. The chapter presents an assessment of the impact of infitah on social equity and income distribution. It offers an examination of the achievements of infitah in terms of the size, rate and pattern of investment. Banks and investment companies, tourism, transport and communications, services, and consultancy projects are more likely to have stronger outside linkages. One of the basic instruments used to attract private investment, in the context of infitah, is the provision of exemptions from taxes and customs duties. In the course of infitah, the Egyptian economy has been consistently subjected to pressure by the Internatonal Monetary Fund to devalue the Pound, to reduce subsidies, and to raise interest rates.
