Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

Ireland published its first comprehensive national policy for mineral exploration and mining on 7 December 2022, establishing a five-year (2022–2027) regulatory framework oriented around critical raw materials supply for the circular economy and net-zero transition. The policy commits to a stable and transparent licensing regime, community participation standards, sustainable development benchmarks, and geological knowledge-building. It designates the Geoscience Regulation Office (GRO) as Ireland's single point of contact for extraction and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as SPOC for processing and recycling under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act framework.

Tanzania's Parliament passed Act No. 10 of 2022, the Tanzania Investment Act, 2022, on 2 December 2022, repealing the Tanzania Investment Act 1997 (Cap. 38 / Act No. 26 of 1997) — the first major overhaul of the country's foreign-investment legal framework in 25 years. The new Act restructures the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) into a One-Stop Facilitation Centre with an integrated electronic system, introduces Strategic and Major Investment Certificates (with capital thresholds of USD 50m foreign / USD 20m local plus minimum 1,000 local jobs and 50% export-uplift requirements), reduces the minimum capital threshold for ordinary local investors from USD 100,000 to USD 50,000, and codifies dispute-resolution access via local arbitration, ICSID, and bilateral/multilateral investment protection agreements. The Act was operationalised by Government Notice No. 94 of 17 February 2023.

On 18 October 2022, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched Saudi Arabia's National Industrial Strategy (NIS) under the Vision 2030 umbrella, with delivery led by the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources (MIM). The strategy prioritises 118 segments within 12 industrial sub-sectors (including downstream chemicals, automotive, aerospace, machinery, and metals), identifies more than 800 investment opportunities estimated at ~USD 266bn, and sets binding 2030/2035 targets: triple manufacturing GDP by 2030, raise industrial exports to SAR 557bn (~USD 148bn), bring cumulative additional investment to SAR 1.3 trillion, and grow factories from ~10,000 to ~36,000 by 2035. NIS sits alongside the National Industrial Development and Logistics Program (NIDLP, 2019) and the Public Investment Fund's strategic-sector mandates as the third leg of the Kingdom's non-oil-economy build-out.

Bangladesh's Cabinet approved the National Industrial Policy 2022 on 11 August 2022, replacing the National Industrial Policy 2016 as the country's foundational umbrella industrial-policy statute; the Ministry of Industries gazetted it on 29 September 2022. The policy sets a target to raise industry's share of GDP to 40% by 2027 and introduces a sector taxonomy covering export-diversification, special-development (electronics, automotive assembly, semiconductors, renewable energy, defence-electronics), priority, reserved, and controlled categories. CMSMEs (Cottage, Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises) are designated the "main driving force of industrialisation," with sector-specific concessional finance, tax holidays, and cluster-development frameworks, alongside FDI incentives including Bangladeshi citizenship for investors committing USD 1 million. The policy for the first time formally incorporates Bangladesh's informal sector within a national industrial-policy framework, mandating a National Informal Sector Database and a 2022–2027 implementation action plan.

The Uganda Mining and Minerals Act 2022, passed by Parliament on 17 February 2022 and signed into law by President Museveni on 14 October 2022, replaces the Mining Act 2003 (Cap 148) and establishes a comprehensive new legal framework for Uganda's extractive sector. The Act grants the Republic of Uganda a 15% free-carried equity interest in all large- and medium-scale mining operations, introduces Mineral Production-Sharing Agreements (MPSAs) as a new licensing instrument alongside reformed exploration, retention, and mining licences, and establishes the Uganda National Mining Company (UNMC) as the state participation vehicle. A mandatory Mineral Beneficiation framework ties export permits to local-processing thresholds, while tightened local-content rules cover procurement, employment, and services obligations, and a new ASM formalisation regime introduces traceability and Mineral Buying Centre requirements.