Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2672 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Signed on 11 February 2026 at Mining Indaba (Cape Town) in the presence of DRC Minister of Mines Louis Watum Kabamba, the MoU grants Entreprise Générale du Cobalt (EGC — the DRC state cobalt monopsony) mining rights over an ERG Africa-owned exploitation area in Lualaba Province to pilot a structured artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) formalisation model covering organised cooperatives, designated ASM zones, controlled buying points, and compliance with safety and labour standards. EGC provides operational leadership and ERG Africa acts as enabling partner; ARECOMS, SEAMAPE, CEEC, and Gécamines provide regulatory and certification support, with GIZ as technical partner. The MoU is the primary public-private implementation vehicle for the December 2025 artisanal processing suspension (`2025-12-19-drc-artisanal-copper-cobalt-processing-suspension`), establishing the re-entry channel through which ASM cobalt supply re-enters formal supply chains under EGC monopsony control.

On 15 October 2025 the German Federal Cabinet adopted the Microelectronics Strategy of the Federal Government, jointly presented by the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE). The strategy is the first comprehensive cabinet-adopted German microelectronics policy framework in over a decade and operationalises Germany's contribution to the European Chips Act envelope. It is organised around three pillars — Research, Skilled Labour and Production — and creates a "Chips Office" to coordinate stakeholder interaction and implementation. It establishes a competence centre for chip design and a flagship "supercomputer in the car" project, and is framed as a key implementation instrument under the High-Tech Agenda Germany (HTAD) and as Germany's contribution to the September 29 2025 Semicon Declaration signed by all 27 EU member states calling for a revised EU Chips Act II.

The UK Department for Business and Trade, with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, published "The UK's Modern Industrial Strategy" (Command Paper CP 1451) on 23 June 2025, laid before Parliament via Written Statement HCWS725. It is the first cross-economy industrial strategy under the Starmer Labour government and replaces the 2017 Industrial Strategy (withdrawn in 2021). It sets a ten-year horizon focused on business investment, productivity and resilience, designates eight priority growth sectors ("IS-8"), and packages instruments including British Business Bank capacity expansion, the National Wealth Fund's GBP 27.8bn envelope, a permanent statutory Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, planning and skills reforms, and sector-specific Sector Plans published alongside.

Sultan Haitham bin Tariq issued Royal Decree 38/2025 on 7 April 2025, published in the Sultanate of Oman Official Gazette on 13 April 2025, enacting a unified statutory framework for Oman's special economic zones (SEZs) and free zones (FZs) under the Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (OPAZ). The law consolidates the previously fragmented regimes governing Duqm SEZ, Salalah Free Zone, Sohar Free Zone, Al Mazunah Free Zone, and Knowledge Oasis Muscat into a single overarching statutory architecture, granting a 10-year corporate income tax exemption (renewable for high-value activities), 100% foreign ownership, full capital and profit repatriation, customs-duty exemptions on construction inputs and operational goods, and a statutory one-stop-shop through OPAZ. The law establishes OPAZ as the consolidated regulatory authority with ring-fenced powers over labour, immigration, customs, environment, and land-use within zone boundaries, and creates a new statutory basis for OPAZ to negotiate sector-specific concessions using usufruct, leasehold, and sub-concession instruments. Royal Decree 38/2025 is the principal Vision 2040 FDI-architecture instrument — the parent statute under which the GFCL Salalah LFP battery-materials usufruct, the Hyport Duqm green-ammonia project, and the Karwa Motors EV-assembly arrangement all operate.

The German Federal Cabinet adopted a 49-measure cross-sectoral supply-side reform package on 17 July 2024 alongside the draft 2025 Federal Budget, aimed at reversing Germany's decade-long slide in global competitiveness rankings (from 6th to 24th since 2014). The package covers tax and social-security exemptions for overtime and weekend work, foreign skilled-worker incentives (Aktivrente / extended short-time-work rules), bureaucracy reduction targeting ~€944m/yr in compliance-cost savings, flexible working-time arrangements, energy-price relief for industry (Strompreispaket), accelerated infrastructure and planning-procedure reforms, expanded investment deductions and degressive depreciation for movable assets, and a raised R&D-allowance ceiling. The initiative is the supply-side / regulatory-reform complement to the simultaneously adopted SVIKG €500bn special infrastructure fund and is structurally analogous to the UK Mansion House Reforms and France's France 2030 productivity-enhancement pillar.