I must admit, inititally i was abit confused whether pakistan should export these birds to Egypt or not. After reading comments from both sides of the arguement, i am now convinced we should go ahead with this deal asap! Personally, i feel when it comes down to it, there are mainly two aspects to this argument; the emtional aspect and the business/strategic aspect!
The emotional aspect is that people may not wish for this deal to go ahead as they have concerns about transferring technology and trust issues (due to the past relationship between pakistan and egypt and also due to Egypts close relationship with India) etc.
However, if you look at it from a business/strategic perspective then it highly outweighs any other arguments...
1)We have a great chance to build our relationship with egypt and take it on another level and also have the opportunity to try and reduce india's influence as much as we can.
2)As we all know Israel is supplying alsorts of advance weapons to our neighbour. It would be great if we can give israel a taste of its own medicine by supplying weapons to its neighbour to enable it to defend itself. I know realistically speaking these planes wont be a match for israel's high tech weaponery but atleast its a start. It probably will not stop israel from cotinuing to provide weapons to india either but again, atleast it will make them think twice!
3)At the moment it seems like we are begging every third country to provide aid to us - most of whom promise alsorts but never actually deliver! The money from this deal should definitely help our economy or atleast give us the opportunity to further improve these birds!
4)This deal will also hopefully convince our other potential customers who may not be so sure at the moment for whatever reason. So the publicity and marketing from this deal will be priceless as it would provide further customers! This will not only provide financial benefits but will enhance our reputation. Above all, it will give us further confidence in ourselves to take on more projects in future insha allah!
5)finally, regarding the issue of TOT....well as many people have already pointed out that will not be the case as it is intended for it to be only assembled in Egypt or it will have limited TOT. From reading some of the posts on this site, Pak army is intending to eventually get around 300 jf17s for our army and as i understand it, we are only at the initial phase of this. So I think this idea will actually work out better for us as we can continue building JF17s in pakistan for our own army and still continue to export them!
Personally, i feel the key to all this will be how we negotiate this deal. Our policy makers are not stupid - actually its pakistani politicians we are talking about so anything is possible just like our cricket team!
On a serious note, IMHO, I think when you look at it from a bigger picture then we should definitely go ahead with this deal as we have very little to lose and everything to gain!