Since January 2019, the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI) is periodically presenting its vision of the urgent reforms needed to boost national economy.

The “Urgent Reform Agenda” is a living document that includes both long and short-term goals and constitutes an open exchange between the private sector and the State authorities in the country.

The reforms considered are either “cross-cutting priorities” or “sector-specific”. Cross-cutting reforms include areas such as labour law, social security law, trade union law, taxes, customs, acquisition of land, registration of property, public services, shipping, among others. The sectoral areas are: pharmaceutical, agriculture, automotive, petroleum, metallurgy, etc.

In each updated version of the Agenda, the achievements based on FEI recommendations are listed, so that FEI Members and the general public can better understand the outcomes of such an advocacy exercise.

For example, Law N. 146 of 2019 amended certain provisions of the Economic Courts Law (N. 120 of 2008) in line with FEI recommendations. The amended provisions will ensure the “expeditious adjudication of cases related to the applicable trade, investment and financial transactions laws”.

The last version of the Agenda was issued in June 2020, in the midst of Covid-19. It “includes a number of proposed exceptional procedures, that, if adopted, can help contain the crisis and allow us to look forward to forging a promising economic future”. Many of those measures have been already successfully implemented such as:

• Deferring the payment of income tax, salary tax, social security contributions, electricity bills.

• Expediting disbursement of the relief Fund for companies that were forced to shut down.
• Granting manufacturers a moratorium on bank payments.

FEI Agenda refers to four Labour and industrial relations related issues:

• The draft new Labour Law,
• The Social Security and Pension law,
• Trade Union Organizations Law and its Executive Regulations,
• The Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs Law).

The draft new labour law is reported to be overly increasing the financial burden of business owners with the creation of funds (Vocational Training Fund, Irregular Employment Fund, etc) or by extending the duration of annual leave. FEI requests that employers and workers’ interests are balanced, since “an efficient and profitable business ultimately benefits workers as it ensures employment security and increased incomes associated with higher productivity”. FEI proposes that the draft law be aligned with the National Development Plan, especially in its objective of increasing productivity.

The Manpower Committee of the House of Representatives approved the draft new labour Law.

On the Social Security and Pension Law, that was finally adopted on 19 August 2019 and entered into force on January 2020, FEI suggested to clarify the contribution rates for old-age, disability and death insurance for both employers and employees, so as to decrease the related disputes. For the private sector employment, FEI proposed to set the employers’ contribution at 11% and employees’ contribution at 10%.  This proposal was not included in the final text of the Law.

Trade Union Organizations Law N.213 of 2017 and its Executive Regulations have been amended in August 2019, with reduction of the minimum number of members required to form a trade union Committee at the company level, or a general trade union, or a federation. The changes are in line with what was recommended by FEI.

Finally, FEI expressed the need to expedite the adoption of the MSMEs Law, to encourage formalization. On July 2020, MSMEs Development Law N. 152 was passed with provisions intended to facilitate financing and doing business, as well as tax incentives. The Law could be clearer on the procedures to be taken and the sectors to be targeted for formalization, according to FEI. 

According to FEI, "Building credible and regular channel of dialogue with the Government, through the reform agenda process, has enhanced our policy advocacy impact, accelerated the response of the Government to our recommendations and improved our efforts towards creating healthy dialogue with the trade unions”.