Rachid Mohamed Rachid is a man on a mission. Three short and hectic years ago he took the unusual step of quitting a high-powered, well-paid job as Unilever’s top executive for the Middle East region to become the first prominent business figure to take up a Cabinet post in Egypt’s Government.

Since making the leap into the reformist administration now running Egypt, Mr Rachid has been winning plaudits as Trade and Industry Minister for his determined pursuit of his goal of transforming the country into an economic powerhouse.

Outlining his ambitious agenda to The Times, he manages to combine a quiet enthusiasm for the task with a modest realism over the obstacles that he must overcome to achieve it. There is little doubting the scale of the challenges that he and his colleagues confront. Three years ago Egypt’s economy was struggling. The pace of growth had slowed to about 3 per cent, from markedly faster rates in the Nineties, so unemployment was climbing as the population swelled. Budget deficits were too large, and foreign investment drying up.

Even today, Egypt still faces, as Mr Rachid acknowledges, formidable challenges. “There is a long way to go,” he says.

In its latest league table of the ease of doing business in 175 countries worldwide, the World Bank still ranked Egypt 165th, for the second year in a row.

Yet tangible progress is being made. The International Monetary Fund, in its own healthcheck of the Egyptian economy last year, noted that the country’s Government was “actively pursuing reforms to strengthen the business climate, by addressing the bottlenecks caused by red tape and cumbersome taxation”.

The IMF commended Egypt’s “significant achievement” in pushing through far-reaching financial sector reforms, restructuring and consolidating the banking sector in measures including the privatisation in 2005 of the Bank of Alexandria, the country’s fourth-largest commercial bank.

Egypt won plaudits, too, from both the World Bank and IMF for one of Mr Rachid’s flagship policies — a radical reform of customs procedures making trade for exporters and importers considerably easier.

It is such nitty-gritty detail, combined with determined action, that Mr Rachid believes will deliver economic results — but he urges patience while these are delivered in a practical way. “Success shows if you are moving in the right direction. People tend to get impatient. The fact is, this is not simple. It is not a situation where you can push a simple button and things will be sorted out.

“I totally understand the urgency . . . \ you can move too fast and lose control of your change and you can put the whole reform programme in danger. People feel there is too much pain and they are not seeing the gain coming out of it,” he said.

Still, the minister has not shied away from aggressive or unpopular steps as he pursues his objectives. He cites his efforts to slash red tape, which he sees as vital to shrinking Egypt’s black economy by making the formal sector one in which enterprising people feel they can do business without being needlessly impeded.

“The approach is that we have to make life in the formal sector more attractive than in the informal sector,” he explains.

He acknowledges that “probably it will take another 4,000 years to change the bureaucratic mindset that started 4,000 years ago”. Thus, his conclusion is that only tough medicine will do the job. “It’s not trying to say: ‘Let’s reduce the number of signatures from 23 to four on one document.’ It’s eliminating the document. So we had to take the courageous approach of saying to people: ‘Starting tomorrow, you have nothing to do in government’.”

Other reforms, such as an extensive privatisation programme, may also be unpopular but need to be pursued, he insists, even if “change everywhere is met by resistance”.

Now, though, he believes that his battles are yielding fruit, with business start-ups soaring: “The fact that every week we have 2,200 people deciding to come into the business environment and put their money, and their future, their sweat and tears and blood into creating something successful is the starting point for entrepreneurship in Egypt taking really the leading role.”

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