Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Decision No. 504 of 2025 of Egypt's Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade, published in the Official Egyptian Gazette on 6 December 2025 and effective the following day, renews for a further one-year period Egypt's specific (per-unit) export duties on several categories of animal-feed inputs: EGP 1,200/ton on straw and grain husks (rice straw excluded), US$60/ton on alfalfa (barsim) and similar forage materials, EGP 1,800/ton on bran and milling by-products (rice bran excluded), EGP 1,800/ton on plant waste/residues used in animal feed (corn cobs and stalks excluded), and EGP 600/ton on corn silage. Exports destined for productive projects in Egyptian free zones are exempt, subject to quantities approved by the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI). The stated rationale is protecting domestic feed-input availability and price stability for Egypt's livestock and poultry sector.

Decision No. 530 of 2025 of Egypt's Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade renews, for a further one-year period from the expiry of the prior decision, an export duty of EGP 9,000 (~US$189) per metric ton on scrap and waste of stainless-steel alloys (HS 7204.21), implemented via Egyptian Customs Tariff Circular No. 67/2025. Shipments destined for free zones within Egypt are excluded from the duty. The stated rationale is to regulate exports of what the ministry classifies as a strategic input and preserve domestic feedstock supply for Egypt's steel industry.

Egypt's Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade issued Ministerial Decision No. 399 of 2025 on 11 September 2025, imposing a 200-day temporary MFN safeguard on imports of semi-finished products of iron or non-alloy steel (billets, HS 7207) — a 16.2% ad-valorem duty on CIF value with a minimum specific-duty floor of EGP 4,613 per metric ton. The measure took effect 14 September 2025 following a Trade Remedies Sector investigation, and was formally notified to the WTO Committee on Safeguards on 10 September 2025 alongside the investigation initiation. It is the third of a same-day trilogy of provisional steel safeguards — Decisions 398 (cold-rolled/ galvanised), 399 (billets), and 400 (hot-rolled coil) — each covering a distinct flat/semi-finished steel product category, imposed under Egypt's National Economy Safeguard Law (Law No. 161 of 1998) and Articles 79, 82 and 83 of its Executive Regulations, citing serious injury from a surge in steel imports (USD 260 million in 2025-H1) to domestic producers.

Egypt's Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade issued Ministerial Decision No. 400 of 2025 on 11 September 2025, imposing a 200-day temporary MFN safeguard on imports of hot-rolled flat steel products (HS 7208) — a 13.6% ad-valorem duty on CIF value with a minimum specific-duty floor of EGP 3,673 per metric ton. The measure covers flat-rolled iron and non-alloy steel of width ≥600 mm, effective 14 September 2025, published in the Official Gazette (Al-Waqai Al-Misriya) on 13 September 2025. The safeguard was initiated under Law No. 161 of 1998 (Anti-Dumping, Anti-Subsidy and Safeguard Law) following a Trade Remedies Sector investigation launched April 2025 on petition from a five-producer domestic-industry consortium (Egyptian Iron and Steel, Ezz Steel, Suez Steel, Beshay Steel, Egyptian Steel), citing a USD 260 million import surge in 2025-H1 causing serious injury to domestic flat-steel producers. Companion Decisions Nos. 398 and 399 of 2025 impose parallel temporary safeguards on cold-rolled/galvanised steel and on semi-finished billets, forming the Egypt 2025 steel safeguard trilogy; a final determination in April 2026 extended the measure to a definitive three-year period.

On 12 June 2025, the African Development Bank Group's Board of Directors approved a USD 184.1 million financing package for the Obelisk Solar Project in Qena Governorate, southern Egypt — billed as Africa's largest solar-plus-storage project, combining a 1-gigawatt solar photovoltaic installation with a 200 MWh battery energy storage system. The AfDB package is composed of USD 125.5 million from ordinary resources, USD 20 million from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), USD 18.6 million from the Canada-AfDB Climate Fund, and USD 20 million from the Climate Investment Funds' Clean Technology Fund. The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company will off-take the power under a 25-year agreement. Total project cost exceeds USD 590 million, with commercial operation targeted for Q3 2026.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi promulgated Law No. 87 of 2025 on 10 June 2025, published the same day in Official Gazette Issue No. 23 mukarrar "A" and effective from 11 June 2025. The law amends Law No. 198 of 2014 (the Mineral Resources Law) by reconstituting the Egyptian General Authority for Mineral Resources as the Authority for Mineral Wealth and Mining Industries (MRMIA), endowed with an independent economic structure as a public economic authority. Headline parameters cut the minimum government shareholding requirement in mining JVs from 25% to 10%, reduce the mining-site lease cost by 60%, and expressly repeal Presidential Decree No. 45 of 1986 dissolving the Egyptian General Authority for Geological Survey and Mining Projects (its functions absorbed into the new Authority). MRMIA is granted broad competencies to develop sector strategies, regulate exploration and exploitation, localise mining industries, and enter into investment partnerships and local-manufacturing joint ventures.

The Egyptian Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, approved an updated National Automotive Industry Strategy (2024–2030) in May 2025 with effect from July 2025. The strategy operationalises the framework set up by Law No. 162 of 2022 (Supreme Council for the Automotive Industry + Eco-Friendly Automotive Industry Financing Fund) and the Automotive Industry Development Programme (AIDP), targeting annual production of 400,000–500,000 vehicles by 2030 (vs ~30,000–50,000 in 2023–24) with 25% earmarked for export, generating ~USD 4 billion/year of revenue. It raises the mandatory local-content threshold from ~45% toward ≥60% by 2030 — a quasi-local-content-requirement enforced via tiered AIDP cash incentives — and is funded by an EGP 1.5 billion (~USD 30 million) FY2024/25 state-budget allocation. It is the first concrete sectoral industrial-policy framework targeting Chinese (Geely, Chery, BYD) and Japanese (Sumitomo, Nissan) OEM investment into Egypt as a Mediterranean / Africa export hub.