Egypt Ministerial Decision No. 530 of 2025 — one-year export duty renewal on stainless steel scrap

Mechanism

This is a one-year renewal of a specific (per-ton, not ad-valorem) export duty Egypt has run on stainless-steel alloy scrap and waste (HS 7204.21) rather than a newly-legislated increase — the decision text itself is framed as "استمرار فرض رسم صادر" (continuation of the imposition of an export duty), and secondary reporting on the implementing customs circular (No. 67/2025) confirms the EGP 9,000/ton rate carries forward unchanged from the expiring prior decision. GTA's "increases" framing appears to describe the renewal event (avoiding a lapse to zero) rather than a rate hike.

The duty targets a narrow but strategically relevant feedstock: nickel-bearing stainless-steel scrap is a key recycled input for Egypt's domestic steel and stainless-alloy producers, and GTA flags Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands as the trading partners most exposed to reduced scrap availability from Egypt.

Why severity 2

Renewal of an existing measure at an unchanged, disclosed per-ton rate (EGP 9,000, quant basis), covering a single narrow HS line rather than a broad materials category. This sits below Egypt's own nitrogen-fertilizer export duty (2026-05-04-egypt-decision-190-nitrogen-fertilizer-export-duty, severity 3, a top-tier global-export product) but slightly above the animal-feed duty renewal (2025-12-06-egypt-ministerial-decision-504-animal-feed-export-duty, severity 2) given stainless scrap's closer linkage to strategic metals/nickel supply chains versus bulk agricultural by-products.

Downstream implications

• Egyptian steel/stainless producers — the duty keeps

domestically-generated scrap feedstock at home, supporting input costs for local mills rather than global market pricing.

• EU scrap importers (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands) — a

marginal cost/availability effect on Egyptian-sourced stainless-scrap supply; these markets have alternative Mediterranean and domestic scrap sourcing, so substitution risk is low.

• **Consistent with Egypt's broader 2025-26 export-duty renewal

pattern** across strategic/semi-strategic materials (animal feed, nitrogen fertilizer, now stainless scrap), reflecting a standing policy of using rolling one-year export duties to retain domestic-industry feedstock rather than outright export bans.

Open questions

• Whether the EGP 9,000/ton rate has been unchanged since the prior

iteration of this duty, or was adjusted at some point in its renewal history — the Arabic gazette PDF was not machine-readable for full text extraction; rate continuity is inferred from secondary reporting on Tariff Circular No. 67/2025.

• Exact prior decision number/date this renews (analogous to the

animal-feed duty's multi-cycle renewal since 2017).