Bio
Dr. ElGarf has more than 30 years of professional experience working with governments, private sector, NGOs as well as several international organizations, on areas related to trade facilitation, trade policy & promotion, trade agreements as well as competition regulations & policies.
Dr. El Garf has been serving as the Chairman of the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) since May 2012. In her capacity as the Chairman of ECA, Dr. El Garf has- at the macro level- played an active role in planning and scoping the overall competition strategy in Egypt, and building and disseminating a competition culture among businesses, commercial prosecutors ,court councilors, government officials, and the larger public, while at the micro level supervising the day to day operations at the Authority to ensure a sound investigation and analysis of filed cases and evidences and the preparation of key case outputs.
During Dr. ElGarf’s four years’ administration, ECA conducted investigations in more than 100 cases, among which 37 violations instances were proved and were referred to the general prosecutor. Moreover, Dr. ElGarf was able to push for a successful advocacy plan to ensure a full application of competition rules and their enforcement. For that purpose, Dr. ElGarf has liaised with a range of internal and external stakeholders including large companies and their advisers, sector regulators and international regulators as well as other government departments to create sufficient awareness of competition principles.
Understanding that a key component of any competition regime is a strong institutional and legal framework, the ECA Board of Directors, as led by Dr. ElGarf, has successfully amended the Egyptian Competition Law, introducing major reforms to more than 65% of the law’s articles; increasing the authority’s independence, effectiveness and transparency. The new Competition law was approved and entered into force in July 2014.
Because of Dr.ElGarf knowledge and experiences she worked intensively in raising awareness of competition policy as one of the main pillars of various regional and multilateral trade agreements, as well as she participated in negotiating competition provisions under different trade agreements of which : COMESA, Agader and DCFTA with EU, looking to enhance cross border trade through adopting competitions rules.
Prior to her role as the Chairman of the ECA, Dr. ElGarf has served - for six years - as a Lead Economist & Trade Agreements Advisor at the Egyptian Ministry of Trade & Industry. Within this role, Dr. ElGarf provided high-level and strategic trade-related technical assistance and advice on international, regional and national trade policy matters. She was a key member in negotiating agricultural trade liberalization as well as services trade liberalization and Neighborhood Policy Egyptian action plan with EU during the period 2006-2010, Dr. El Garf participated in multilateral negotiations in trade facilitation area.
Moreover, she assisted in the establishment and strengthening of regional and national trade consultative networks with all stakeholders including SMEs in different governorates and crafted as well as evaluated different scenarios for negotiations.
Building on Dr.ElGarf academic background she used to deliver training in trade negotiations matters to government’s officials in Egypt and various Arabic countries. In addition, she intensively participated in raising awareness and advocating business sectors on different regional and international trade opportunities and challenges.