The Minister of Trade and Industry, Tarek Kabil, issued the executive regulation for the law of facilitating the procedures of licensing industrial establishments No. 15/2017, which was approved by the parliament and issued a republican decree May. The minister said that the regulation aims at simplifying the procedures and shortening the documentary cycle and eliminating the bureaucracy and facilitating investors to obtain the necessary licences and operating licences, which is one of the most important factors affecting the classification of Egypt in the doing business reports of international institutions. In a press conference held Sunday at the ministry, Kabil added that the regulation adopts new tools and mechanisms for licensing procedures, including a list of requirements for granting licences in accordance with the risks of industrial activity, and introduces a licensing system through notification of 80% of existing industries. The minister pointed out that, under this regulation, the time of issuance of the licence will be reduced from 600 days to less than 7 days for licensing through notification and less than 30 days for pre-licensing, and the conversion of the system of implementation of procedures and issuance processes from a manual system to an online one. On the comparison of required documents to grant operating licences in accordance with the new law compared to the old law, Kabil explained that instead of the 11 agencies in the old law that dealt with licences, the new law only set up one agency, which shortens the basic procedures for the investor in three operations instead of sevenin the previous situation. This also reduces the internal procedures of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) from 154 procedures to only 19. "The IDA, upon completion of the application for all documents, has to decide on the application within a period not exceeding 30 days from the date of its submission. In case of non-fulfillment of the required documents, the IDA informs the applicant within a period not exceeding 21 days from the date of submitting the application," the minister noted. "The executive regulation clearly defined the controls of the inspection of industrial facilities whether by the IDA or the accreditation offices and stipulated the existence of a committee authorised by the IDA to examine the industrial." The minister stressed that the regulation states that any official or employee who disrupts the work of any licensed industrial facility pays a fine of not less than EGP 5,000 and not more than EGP100,000. From his part, the head of the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI), Mohamed El-Sewedy said that the new Industrial Licensing Law represents a great leap forward for the industrial licensing system, pointing out that the law represents an important step on the right path towards a competitive industrial environment that supports all national industries, especially short and medium enterprises (SMEs).
