A new platform will bring 92 government bodies together for licensing. What should change for an investor trying to get a factory up and running today? Joining me is Marc Bondoky, Public Policy and Legal Researcher. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us.
Thank you so much. It's my pleasure.
What should actually change for an investor trying to get a licence in Egypt today?
There are two relevant platforms. The first already exists — a unified digital investment licence platform covering 460 services across 41 government entities. The second, which is under development, is the Economic Entities Platform, which coordinates company formation and licensing across approximately 92 governing bodies. For an investor, the practical things should be: one digital entry point for generic review, one status record, and defined timelines rather than sequential procedures across separate agencies. An existing precedent is the Suez Canal Economic Zone, where the China-Egypt Zone alone hosts 200 companies and over $3.8 billion in investment under a single window system. One of the main relevant performance measures is the median number of days from application to final licence — which the government intends to publish and track by sector.
When the state is adding more committees to settle investor disputes, will that be enough to reassure foreign companies?
Investor-state dispute resolution has different serving mechanisms for different purposes. Arbitration provides binding enforceable rulings, typically through institutions such as ICSID or the Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration, and it remains available under Egypt's bilateral investment treaties without any change. Mediation provides a faster, consensual route for resolving operational matters — such as customs classifications or licensing interpretations — before they escalate into formal claims. The newly expanded Dispute Settlement and Agreement Committees are designed to strengthen this second pillar. Their function is to resolve administrative and operational disputes early, domestically, and at lower cost — which in turn reduces the volume of matters that reach arbitration and preserves arbitration for disputes that genuinely require it. It is a complementary structure, not a substitute. International arbitration is unaffected by recourse to these committees.
Thank you very much for taking the time to join us today.
Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Have a good afternoon.
