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

Framework Law n° 03-22 forming Morocco's Investment Charter, promulgated by Dahir n° 1-22-76 of 14 joumada I 1444 (9 December 2022) and published in Bulletin Officiel n° 7152 (12 December 2022), replaces the 1995 Investment Charter (Law 18-95) — the first major overhaul of Morocco's horizontal investment-incentive regime in nearly 30 years. Operationalised by Decree n° 2.23.1 (Government Council 26 January 2023, BO publication February 2023), the regime layers a "main" support mechanism (CAPEX subsidies up to 30% combining sector-priority, regional/territorial, gender, sustainable and value-chain bonuses) and a "specific" mechanism for strategic projects ≥ MAD 2bn (~USD 200m) covering EV/batteries, semiconductors, green hydrogen, defence and pharmaceuticals — providing the legal foundation for Morocco's emergence as Africa's leading EV-battery and automotive industrial hub.

Natural Resources Canada published Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy on 8 December 2022, committing $3.8 billion CAD over eight years (drawn from Budget 2022 and the Fall Economic Statement 2022) to develop Canada's position across the critical-minerals value chain. The strategy designates 31 priority minerals, sets six strategic pillars (data and geoscience, investment and trade, indigenous participation, workforce development, regulatory environment, and sustainability), and explicitly positions Canada as the preferred FTA-partner supplier for the US Inflation Reduction Act's domestic-content requirements under CUSMA/USMCA.

On 8 December 2022 the Thai Board of Investment issued Announcement No. 8/2565 "Policies and Criteria for Investment Promotion", setting Thailand's five-year (2023-2027) horizontal investment-promotion strategy. The Announcement entered into force from 8:30 a.m. on 3 January 2023 and applies to all investment-promotion applications filed with the BOI from that date. The strategy reorients Thailand's investment regime around three core concepts — (i) innovation, technology and creativity, (ii) competitiveness and rapid adaptability, and (iii) inclusiveness, including environmental and social sustainability — and is operationalised through seven pillars: industrial transition to BCG (Bio-Circular-Green) / smart industries, regional-hub positioning (EV, electronics, food, medical, aviation, automation), supply-chain strengthening, technology upgrading, SME competitiveness, sustainable development, and BCG-economy alignment. Incentives are structured into Group A (corporate-income-tax exemption for 3-13 years, with Group A1+ activities — frontier-technology semiconductors, advanced biotech, certain EV components — receiving up to 10-13 years CIT exemption with no cap) and Group B (non-tax incentives only). Fundamental eligibility criteria carried over from prior regimes: minimum THB 1 million investment, new-machinery requirement, 20% annual revenue-growth projection, and a 3:1 debt-to-equity threshold. The 8 December 2022 release was accompanied by 16 additional implementing announcements (Announcements 9/2565 to 24/2565) covering specific activity lists and merit-based incentives. This is the umbrella framework under which Thailand's subsequent sector-specific BOI instruments operate — the EV 3.5 package (2023-12-19, effective 2024-01-01), the EV Board HEV manufacturing excise incentives (2024-07-26), and the National Semiconductor and Advanced Electronics Industry Strategy (2026-01-07) all sit inside this 2023-2027 investment-promotion regime.

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.

Angola's Ministry of Transport formalised a 30-year concession to Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR — Trafigura 49.5% / Mota-Engil 49.5% / Vecturis S.A. 1%) for the operation, management and maintenance of the Lobito Corridor — comprising the 1,300 km Benguela Railway from the Port of Lobito to Luau (Angola-DRC border) and the Lobito port mineral terminal. The international tender was won on 4 November 2022; the concession contract was signed on 4 July 2023 at a ceremony attended by the Presidents of Angola, the DRC and Zambia. LAR commenced operations in January 2024. The concession is paired with the trilateral Lobito Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency Agreement (LCTTFA), signed at Lobito Port on 27 January 2023 by the Transport ministers of Angola, the DRC and Zambia, which establishes the cross-border customs/transit framework for the corridor.

Council Regulation (EU) 2022/2372, adopted 24 October 2022, establishes a binding framework empowering HERA (Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority) to activate emergency supply measures for crisis-relevant medical countermeasures — vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, medical devices, and in-vitro diagnostics — when a public health emergency at Union level is declared under Regulation (EU) 2022/2371. Emergency-mode powers include joint procurement on behalf of Member States, mandatory information requests to manufacturers on stockpiles and production capacity, accelerated R&D funding under the Emergency Research and Innovation Plan, and Union-level stockpile authority. This is the foundational binding instrument for the EU's post-COVID medical supply-chain resilience architecture; it is referenced by every subsequent EU pharma-resilience initiative including the Critical Medicines Act proposal (2025) and the 2025 MCM Strategy.

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.

Law No. 162 of 2022, approved by the Egyptian House of Representatives on 18 October 2022 and ratified by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi at the end of October 2022, establishes (i) the Supreme Council for the Automotive Industry — chaired by the Prime Minister with Ministers of Industry (Deputy Chair), Planning, Finance, Transport, and State for Military Production, plus four nominated experts — as the inter-ministerial policy body for localising vehicle manufacturing, and (ii) the Environment-Friendly Automotive Industry Financing Fund as a dedicated public-finance vehicle for EV/PHEV/CNG production support. The Supreme Council held its first meeting under PM Mostafa Madbouly on 15 February 2023. The framework was operationalised via the National Automotive Industry Development Programme (AIDP), launched at IATF 2023 (Cairo, 9–15 November 2023). AIDP grants tiered incentives keyed to local value-add, annual production volume, new investment value, and emissions performance, targeting ~400,000 vehicles/year by 2030 with a step-up of mandatory local content from ~45% to 60% by 2030. This is the first Egypt and first North-African automotive industrial-policy action in the IPTM register.

On 16 October 2022, Jordan promulgated Investment Environment Law No. 21 of 2022, published in Official Gazette No. 5821, entering into force 90 days later on approximately 14 January 2023. The law replaces the 2014 Investment Law No. 30 and restructures Jordan's entire FDI-promotion architecture: it establishes the Ministry of Investment (MOIN) and the Investment Council as apex bodies, codifies Development Zones, Free Zones, and Special Economic Zones (including the Aqaba Special Economic Zone — gateway for Jordan's phosphate exports via JPMC, the world's second-largest phosphate producer), and enshrines national-treatment guarantees with customs exemptions, zero-rated sales tax incentives, and investor-state dispute-settlement provisions for qualifying protected FDI. The law is the foundational parent statute for Jordan's IMF Extended Fund Facility-conditioned reform agenda and positions the country within the IMEC (India–Middle East–Europe Corridor) trade-investment integration architecture.

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.

Loi n° 22-18 du 24 juillet 2022 relative à l'investissement (Journal Officiel de la République Algérienne n° 50 du 28 juillet 2022) is Algeria's first comprehensive investment-code overhaul since Ordonnance 01-03 du 20 août 2001 and its 2016 Loi 16-09 amendment. The law replaces the legacy framework, codifies a liberalised FDI regime — retaining 51% Algerian-equity floors only for strategic sectors (hydrocarbons extraction, mining extraction, military/security) — creates the Agence Algérienne de Promotion de l'Investissement (AAPI) as the new single-window FDI-promotion agency and the Conseil National de l'Investissement (CNI) chaired by the Premier Ministre, and defines three investment regimes: Régime des Secteurs, Régime des Zones (Sud + Hauts-Plateaux territorial incentives), and the Régime Structurant for large-scale strategic projects ≥ DZD 2bn (~USD 15M) that attract negotiated multi-pillar fiscal, customs, parafiscal, and social-contribution incentive packages. Eight implementing décrets exécutifs n° 22-296 through 22-303 were published in JORADP n° 60 du 18 septembre 2022, operationalising governance, incentive matrices, the digital Registre National des Investissements, and dispute-resolution architecture.

President Ilham Aliyev signed Presidential Sərəncam (Order) No. 3378 on 22 July 2022 approving the Strategy for the Socio-Economic Development of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2022-2026, operationalising the Azerbaijan 2030: National Priorities for Socio-Economic Development (February 2021) across five pillars: (1) sustainably growing competitive economy, (2) dynamic inclusive socially just society, (3) competitive human capital and modern innovations, (4) Great Return to liberated territories, and (5) clean environment and green growth. The strategy serves as the master policy chassis for SOCAR's investment programme across upstream (Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli, Shah Deniz), midstream (Southern Gas Corridor — TANAP + TAP delivering ~12 bcm/year to Europe and Turkiye), and downstream (Heydar Aliyev Baku Refinery, SOCAR Turkiye STAR Refinery, SOCAR Petkim), and anchors the July 2022 EU-Azerbaijan Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Partnership in the Field of Energy, under which Azerbaijan committed to supply more than 20 bcm/year to Europe by 2027. The strategy also provides the policy foundation for offshore wind and solar agreements with Masdar (UAE) and ACWA Power (Saudi Arabia) under the green-growth pillar, and for the Karabakh and East Zangezur economic-region reconstruction programme following the September 2023 reintegration.

Presidential Resolution No. PP-319 of 14 July 2022 directed Navoiuran State Enterprise to more than double uranium output from approximately 3,500 tU/year to 7,100 tU/year by 2030, expand the national uranium reserve base to 100,000 tonnes through new exploration, and develop domestic nuclear-fuel-cycle conversion capacity alongside rare-metal co-extraction. The resolution simultaneously reorganised the uranium and rare-earth sector into a vertically integrated state enterprise — Navoiuran — spun out of the former Navoiy MMC JSC, placing the full extraction-to-conversion chain under state control.

Azerbaijan's Milli Məclis adopted the Law on Investment Activity (Qanun No. 551-VIQ) on 22 June 2022, replacing the 1992 Law on Protection of Foreign Investments and consolidating the country's fragmented investor-rights framework into a single foundational statute. The Law establishes national-treatment and most-favoured-investor guarantees for all investors, restricts expropriation to public-purpose proceedings with full market-value compensation, and authorises profit and capital repatriation in convertible currency. It preserves the Investment Promotion Document (IPD) framework administered by the Ministry of Economy while updating the statutory authority for tax and customs incentive schedules, dispute-resolution pathways, and prohibited-sector definitions.

Loi n° 2022-408, promulgated by President Alassane Ouattara on 13 June 2022 and published in the Journal Officiel de la République de Côte d'Ivoire (JORCI) on 19 September 2022, is the foundational local-content statute governing the entire petroleum and gas value chain in Côte d'Ivoire. The law mandates employment priority for Ivorian nationals, preference for Ivorian-registered enterprises in goods-and-services procurement, expatriate-substitution timelines, and technology-transfer obligations on all concessionnaires, co-contractors, and sub-contractors operating in upstream and midstream petroleum and gas activities. Implementing Décret n° 2023-441 du 24 mai 2023 created the Comité de Suivi du Contenu Local under the Ministre du Pétrole and the Plateforme du Contenu Local digital monitoring system under the Direction Générale des Hydrocarbures (DGH), operationalising annual reporting and three-year forecasting plan requirements for operators.

The Act on the Promotion of Ensuring National Security through Integrated Implementation of Economic Measures (Law No. 43 of 2022), enacted 18 May 2022, establishes a four-pillar framework: (1) supply-chain resilience for "specified critical products," (2) security of critical infrastructure, (3) state-backed development of "specified critical technologies," and (4) non-disclosure of nationally sensitive patents. A December 2022 Cabinet Order designated 11 product categories as specified critical products, including semiconductors, storage batteries, permanent magnets, cloud programs, LNG, critical minerals, machine tools, and aircraft parts. Competent ministries must publish stable-supply plans, can fund private-sector surveys, and may provide subsidies to qualifying firms.

The Subsidy Control Act 2022 (Royal Assent 28 April 2022; in force 4 January 2023) replaced EU state-aid rules as the UK's domestic subsidy-control framework, fulfilling an obligation under the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). It establishes a principles-based self-assessment regime administered by a new Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU) at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), allowing UK public authorities to grant subsidies without prior Commission approval while remaining compliant with WTO subsidy disciplines and TCA obligations.

On 20 April 2022 Mexico's Diario Oficial de la Federación published a reform to the Ley Minera (Mining Law) declaring lithium "patrimonio de la Nación" (national patrimony) and of public utility, adding Article 5 Bis to state that no further concessions, licenses, contracts, permits or authorizations for lithium exploration, exploitation, benefit or use will be granted to private parties — reserving the entire value chain exclusively to the State (Articles 1, 9 and 10 also amended). On 23 August 2022 a follow-on decree created "Litio para México" (LitioMx), a decentralized public agency governed by a board of five cabinet secretaries (Energy as chair, plus Finance, Economy, Interior and Environment) and technically supported by the Mexican Geological Service, holding exclusive rights to explore, exploit and commercialize Mexico's lithium deposits. The law was subsequently upheld as constitutional by Mexico's Supreme Court in March 2026 (Acción de Inconstitucionalidad 78/2022, filed separately).

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.

The Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority (SBMA) granted five-year exploration licences on 14 February 2022 (formal ceremony 23 February 2022) to three operators — Cook Islands Cobalt (CIC) Limited, Moana Minerals Limited (a subsidiary of Ocean Minerals LLC), and CIIC Seabed Resources Limited — under the Seabed Minerals Act 2019, marking the first commercial seabed-mineral exploration rights awarded in any Pacific island EEZ. The licences cover polymetallic nodule deposits across the Cook Islands' ~1.96 million km² exclusive economic zone, estimated at approximately 6.7 billion wet tonnes rich in cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese at 4,500–5,300 m depth on the abyssal plain. Initial five-year terms run to February 2027; in November 2025 the SBMA confirmed all three licences will be extended a further five years to at least 2032, pending renewal applications evaluated by the independent Licensing Panel.