Egypt Air plane is due tomorrow Monday at city of Quangeshtu the capital of Quanghadong province that is economically flourishing in south of China. This is an inauguration of a new airline route that connects the Egyptian capital Cairo and that Chinese city via the Thai capital Bangkok.
These information was uttered by the Regional Manager of EgyptAir company in China and Hong Kong Ayman El-Samiry during a press conference he held yesterday Saturday in Beijing, where he disclosed that the new route will be operated three times a week to increase the total weekly flights of EgyptAir to China into seven, four of which between Cairo and Beijing via the Thai capital in addition to the new route, in order to cope with the growing tourism and trade movement between the two countries.
The inauguration of this airline comes within the framework of investing the positive outcomes that resulted from the visit paid by President Hosny Mubarak to China during November last year, which granted a new momentum and paved the way in front of reinforcing and activating cooperation relations between the two friendly countries, particularly as regards of trade and tourism sectors which form key sources of Egyptian-Chinese relations.
On the commercial level the latest official statistics revealed that volume of trade exchange between the two countries by the end of last year recorded 3.2 billion U.S. dollars, while the volume of Chinese investments in Egypt amounted 300 million dollars, yet the desired target to reach by the two countries is five billion dollars by the year 2010 and also increase of investments to reach two billion dollars by the same year.
On the tourism arena the Chinese Tourism to Egypt witnessed ever growing development and the enthusiasm of Chinese to visit Egypt was maximized since its addition to the national list of key tourism destinations as number of tourists increased from 13000 tourists in 2001 to 52000in 2002, while it is expected to surpass one million tourists by the year 2010.
In the light of reports of World Tourism Organization that indicate China would be the largest source of tourists on the world level by year 2020 as number of Chinese tourists abroad would reach one hundred million, so Egypt is seeking to attract at least one million tourists of them to its destination.
The two countries have great hopes related to the direct airlines between them to accomplish the desired targets as regards the two sectors of trade and tourism.
