Dr. Mostafa Madbouly, Prime Minister, held a meeting; To follow up the efforts made to localize the auto industry in Egypt, the program to replace the microbus and taxi to work with natural gas, and the electric car manufacturing plan, in the presence of Major General Mahmoud Sharawi, Minister of Local Development, Dr. Yasmine Fouad, Minister of Environment, Nevin Jamea, Minister of Trade and Industry, and Engineer Mohamed Ahmed Morsi Minister of State for Military Production, Lieutenant General Abdel Moneim El-Terras, Chairman of the Arab Organization for Industrialization, and Ahmed Kjouk, Deputy Minister of Finance for Financial Policies, officials of the concerned authorities, while Hisham Tawfiq, Minister of Public Business Sector, participated in the meeting via "video conference."

During the meeting, the Minister of Trade and Industry reviewed the operational steps taken by the Ministry of Trade and Industry to advance the auto sector until this October, and the Minister pointed out that the areas in which the Ministry is working on with regard to the automotive sector are the strategy for the automobile industry and its feeding industries, and the program to replace microbuses and taxis to work with gas. Natural, electric vehicle manufacturing plan.

The minister added that the auto industry is one of the strategic industries, as it is in itself a measure of the progress of peoples, so the state has been preparing a national strategy for the localization of the vehicle industry and the industries that feed it, pointing out that a number of legislations are expected to be issued that aim to stimulate the industry, develop and deepen Industry, and increase the added value during the coming period.

The Minister of Industry clarified that the compatibility of the legislative structure of the aforementioned strategy with the international obligations of Egypt was studied, along with reformulating some phrases in the vehicle industry development program.

With regard to the program to replace microbuses and taxis to work with natural gas, the Minister said that within the framework of taking executive measures in this regard, on August 30th, Joint Ministerial Resolution No. 400 of 2020 was issued to form a higher committee headed by the Ministers of Finance, Trade and Industry, which includes in its membership representatives of all The ministries and bodies related to the project, and they are specialized in supervising and following up the executive procedures to accelerate the commencement of the replacement project, and 4 meetings of the aforementioned committee have been held, where the committee's work focused on three axes: the infrastructure, logistics, financial axis, and industry axis.

Besides, and according to what was not presented by the minister, 7 governorates have been identified to start implementing the first phase of the project, and these governorates are: Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Port Said, Fayoum, Red Sea, and Suez, in light of the existing natural gas stations. And the surplus capacities of those stations, which are commensurate with the target numbers, while the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources provides the committee with detailed data on the surplus production capacities of natural gas in the seven governorates to be precise, and the number of cars that absorb this surplus are distributed among the two types of taxis and microbuses.

The Minister noted that the Ministry of Trade and Industry held meetings with the concerned authorities, and a reference paper was drawn up on the general conditions and specifications eligible for local companies to join the program for replacing microbus vehicles with new dual-fuel vehicles (petrol / diesel-natural gas).

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry held a meeting with the two companies that expressed their readiness to immediately start producing microbus vehicles for the program, and a vision of production capacities was prepared to meet the needs of the first phase of the project, over a period of 14 months, to reach the target of the first phase of the program, and it was agreed to rely on a development agency. The projects and its branches spread across the governorates of the Republic in preparation for sending those requests to the banks that grant funding, and in this regard, the Prime Minister directed the speedy launch of the car replacement program, as well as the conversion of vehicles to work with natural gas, and was charged with providing more incentives to the beneficiaries of the program.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Environment presented the advantages of converting cars to run with natural gas, indicating that she is ready to provide technical support and provide market studies and studies of the most polluted places.

With regard to the manufacture of the electric car, the Minister of Industry indicated that the Egyptian General Authority for Standardization and Quality has held a number of meetings with the concerned authorities to inform about the standard specifications for the production of electric cars, and a number of specialized specifications in the field of buses and electric cars have been issued, in order to be a reference for any party operating On manufacturing electric cars in Egypt.

This comes as the Minister of the Public Enterprise Sector offered a number of incentives that are required to be approved for the settlement of the electric car industry in Egypt