Egypt may be lurching towards a much-needed IMF loan, but that hasn’t put off some foreign partners. GB Auto, the Cairo-listed auto assembler, will begin putting together and distributing cars from China’s Geely in the second quarter of 2012.
GB will assemble the cars from kits supplied by Geely (the Hangzhou-based carmaker that bought Volvo in a $1.5bn deal in 2010), and will distribute the finished product in markets across North Africa, beginning with Egypt. The deal is “one of several partnerships we will announce this year,” said GB’s chairman, Raouf Ghabbour, in a statement.
GB controls 32 per cent of the Egyptian passenger car market, where it rose to success as the exclusive local assembler, importer and distributor of cars from South Korea’s Hyundai. It is now the the Middle East’s largest car assembler. High tarriffs on fully-assembled imported cars have encouraged a number of international auto brands, including BMW and China’s Chery, to have their vehicles put together in Egypt.