The government spent EGP 2bn to facilitate industrial lands and allocated EGP 400m in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2015/2016 budget to facilitate industrial lands, according to Minister of Industry and Foreign Trade Tarek Qabil.
Qabil said the ministry seeks to unify the body or agency to offer industrial lands since it is distributed between the ministries of Housing, Industry, and Investment. The ministry plans to develop the domestic industry since 28% of these industries are small industries.
In a press conference Sunday, Qabil said the ministry continues to cooperate with industrial developers to facilitate lands for investors to avoid land-banking brokers. “We have to cooperate with developers partially after the decrease of funds allocated to facilitate lands for EGP 400m,” he said.
The government offered 622 pieces of land to overcome the problem of lack of industrial lands and 2,200 investors applied for these lands.
“The ministry’s plan to expand and develop the industrial areas across Egypt, focusing on Upper Egypt, and developing industrial zones and establishing specialised industrial clusters for small and medium-sized industries”.
The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) held its first executive meeting in September to discuss the project of “offering an integrated investment environment to improve investment policies, legal, and institutional framework”.
IDA launched “Erada” project, which consists on facilitating industrial licenses’ procedures and automating the land allocation procedures.
The World Bank allocated a total of $5m to implement the project, of which $2.25m were allocated to develop the investment services’ system and develop and automate licenses’ procedures in IDA.
