ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that the massive investments poured into Egypt’s public sector during the years of its socialist experiment failed to achieve the desired result, which is an annual return on investment of not less than 15 per cent after the deduction of inflation rates. To those who point with pride to the huge industrial plants and institutions established during that period, we say that modern management sciences have taught us that when it comes to economic performance, pride is not measured in terms of the size of factories and investments, because financial outlays are not an end in themselves. Rather, pride is measured against the economic return on investment. A dictum of modern management sciences is that the greatest disaster which can befall any economic enterprise is when the thinking of its senior management comes to be governed by considerations of scale rather than of return on investment.
