Position Paper on the Draft Law Reorganizing the “Future of Egypt Authority for Sustainable Development”

Authored by Nada Arafat, researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)

The government submitted a draft law to the House of Representatives to reorganize the Future of Egypt Authority for Sustainable Development (FoE) in the beginning of July 2026, only a few days before the end of its annual legislative session. The speaker immediately referred the bill on 6 July to a joint parliamentary committee composed of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee and the bureaus of the Committees on Planning and Budget, Economic Affairs, Foreign Relations, Defense and National Security, Industry, Agriculture, Irrigation, Food Security and Livestock, Energy and Environment, Housing, Public Utilities and Reconstruction, Manpower, Education and Scientific Research, Social Solidarity, Family and Persons with Disabilities, Media, Culture and Antiquities, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Health Affairs, Communications and Information Technology, Local Administration, and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

Two days later, and with the same haste, this unusually large joint committee, which brought together 18 parliamentary committees, met over two days. During those meetings, it approved the bill after introducing numerous amendments to its articles in agreement with the government and representatives of FoE, before referring it for discussion in the next plenary session of the House of Representatives.

The proposed law entrenches FoE’s continuing encroachment into various economic sectors, an expansion that began in recent years and continues today. The new element introduced by the bill is that it codifies into law FoE’s various practices across multiple areas, by creating an economic and administrative entity of a special nature that takes control of public assets while managing them according to the private-sector rules.

The proposal places FoE directly under the president of the republic and grants it financial, technical and administrative independence. It also concentrates in its hands the powers of planning, rule-making, licensing, allocation, investment and asset management, oversight and collection. This concentration puts FoE in the position of both regulator and operator at the same time, opening the door to institutional overlap that should have been governed by clearer rules of oversight and transparency. Although the draft law underwent extensive amendments inside the joint parliamentary committee, the governing logic of FoE as an entity with sweeping powers remains intact.

This paper analyzes the scope of the new draft law and the exceptional, unprecedented status it creates for an authority whose founding decree and mandate have not been published in the Official Gazette from 2022 to the present. The paper begins by reviewing the emergence of FoE and its steady expansion before the draft law reorganizing it was submitted. It then examines the provisions of the government’s bill and the problems they raise for governance and citizens’ economic and social rights. It then comments on the amendments that the government and FoE agreed to introduce during the two discussion sessions held by the joint parliamentary committee. The paper concludes with a list of recommendations and proposed amendments submitted to members of parliament before the bill is debated, and likely approved, in the plenary session.

Before the Bill: Exceptional Powers and Expansion Already Underway

The draft law reorganizing FoE did not arrive in parliament to create a new entity from scratch. FoE had already spent years expanding into land, agriculture, food, markets, and real estate before the public had access to a clear picture of its founding decree, the limits of its mandate, or its relationship to the ministries and authorities with overlapping jurisdictions.

FoE began as a land reclamation project in the New Delta, before being turned in 2022 into an independent authority by a presidential decree that has not been published in the Official Gazette to this day. During this period, the project expanded from an initial area of around 200,000 feddans (or about 840 square kilometers), to the management of roughly 4.5 million feddans (about 18,900 square kilometers), the entire area of the New Delta Project, after it was transferred to FoE from the Armed Forces’ National Service Projects Organization. It then moved into economic and regulatory roles that had historically been distributed among various public authorities and ministries.

Before the draft law reached parliament, FoE had already taken over wheat and strategic commodity imports, after decades in which this role had been managed by the General Authority for Supply Commodities. It had also taken part in receiving local wheat from farmers, begun issuing approvals for livestock imports and managing local farms, and expanded its role into the management of several major lakes, the Egyptian Commodities Exchange, and agricultural production inputs. FoE also entered into partnerships with public and private entities to establish a company producing vegetable and fruit seeds, as well as projects to develop the agricultural sector’s digital infrastructure, regulate the distribution of subsidized fertilizers to farmers, and manage government-affiliated food outlets.

FoE’s expansion also extended into real estate and the stock market. Through Nations of Sky, which presents itself as FoE’s real estate arm, FoE entered residential and administrative projects, including Zomra East and SkyRidge in eastern Cairo, as well as the Jirian project in partnership with private developers. FoE also created an investment portfolio on the Egyptian Exchange and acquired stakes in its own name in listed companies operating across several sectors, chiefly real estate, tourism, medical industries, poultry, agriculture and food.

The draft law gives this expansion a more entrenched legal framework. It codifies an entity that has already expanded across multiple areas and files, then grants it broader legal tools to operate within them through direct subordination to the president of the republic, financial, technical and administrative independence, sovereign and service funds, and sweeping powers over planning, licensing, investment, asset management, oversight and collection.

Writing the Exception Into Law: The Government’s Draft Bill

The government’s draft law seeks to formalize and expand the exceptions FoE already enjoys. It also opens the door to further unchecked expansion of its powers in the future. The bill codifies the concentration of a long list of powers in the hands of a single entity, exempts it from laws governing public administration, public procurement and maximum income limits, and gives it an independent financial framework to manage public assets owned by the people, along with authority over the country’s limited land and water resources. All of this comes in the absence of oversight and governance rules, and without guarantees for citizens, the owners of these public funds, assets and resources, to know and participate in decisions concerning them.

1. An Open-Ended Mandate for FoE’s Future Expansion

The government bill’s expansive scope begins with its definitions. It defines FoE’s “sectoral scope of work” as sectors of economic activity deemed strategically important at the national level, without identifying those sectors or setting any objective standard to delimit them. It also defines a “national project” as any project carried out within FoE’s sectoral or geographic scope of work, provided it meets at least one criterion from a set of criteria that the bill itself does not specify, but leaves to be issued later by presidential decree based on a proposal from FoE’s board of directors.

This definition leaves FoE’s mandate open to expansion through subsequent decisions, including on the basis of proposals made by FoE’s own board, rather than being defined by law. The danger is compounded by Article 3, which sets out FoE’s objectives as maximizing economic power, achieving food, water and energy security, sustaining sovereign wealth, and contributing to social justice. These are broad and vague objectives that could extend across many sectors, from agriculture, water and energy to housing, services, infrastructure and logistics, and could also allow further powers to be added later.

2. Concentrating Five Powers in a Single Entity

The most dangerous aspect of the draft law is that it combines FoE’s roles as both regulator and operator. Instead of distributing the powers of planning, rule-making, licensing, allocation, investment and oversight among different bodies, the law places them all in one hand. Article 4 gives FoE the power to designate sustainable development zones and to set the strategy for classifying, developing, operating, managing and promoting them. It also gives FoE the power to establish special rules for the conditions, specifications, procedures and timeframes governing licenses, approvals, permits and authorizations within these zones.

This authority is then expanded in later articles. Article 30 regulates the registration and licensing of companies and entities. Article 31 regulates the allocation of real estate required for projects. Article 32 grants the zones and the projects established in them tax and customs exemptions, incentives and benefits, while Article 33 makes FoE the sole competent administrative authority inside sustainable development zones, with the exception of the Ministry of Defense. Article 34 establishes a system of “single approval” that is self-executing for the establishment, operation or management of a project, or the registration of an entity within it, without requiring any further approvals. Article 39 also gives FoE the power to issue exploration and exploitation licenses for mines, quarries and salt pans within these zones.

Alongside its regulatory and licensing powers, Articles 16 and 18 turn FoE into a vehicle for managing and investing public assets and funds, by incorporating the funds and assets allocated to it into its capital, granting it exclusive control over the returns from investing and exploiting those assets, the proceeds from managing and disposing of state-owned private property, and the returns from overseeing public state property. This structure is completed by the creation of a sovereign fund affiliated with FoE, with Articles 47, 48, 51 and 53 granting it broad powers to receive state-owned assets and funds, manage them, enter into contracts over them, and expand through acquisition, merger or the transfer of other national funds under its control.

This structure makes FoE a rule-maker, licensing and approval authority, land allocator, asset investor, regulator and collector all at once. It creates a conflict of interest, especially when FoE is directly or indirectly involved in activities for which it sets the rules, grants approvals and carries out oversight.

The draft law uses the language of governance, but leaves the drafting of governance rules and oversight of their implementation to FoE’s board of directors. This undermines the very substance of governance, since it remains internal, does not come from outside FoE, and is not subject to independent general rules. Instead, it is managed inside an entity that enjoys broad exemptions from public administration laws. This weak governance is further limited by Article 10 of the promulgating law, which exempts FoE from the application of basic administrative and regulatory laws, including the Public Authorities Law, the Civil Service Law, the law regulating contracts concluded by public bodies, and the maximum income law.

The draft law also creates an investment arm affiliated with FoE under the name “Future of Egypt Sovereign Wealth Fund — Pyramids of the Nile,” referred to in the text as the “sovereign fund.” The fund is responsible for investing and reinvesting the funds and assets allocated to it, or whose ownership or subordination is transferred to it. It is also granted the same powers previously given by the government to The Sovereign Fund of Egypt, which was established in 2018 to manage state-owned assets and has faced extensive criticism over the absence of transparency and governance. Creating another sovereign fund through the same mechanism therefore raises the same concerns and criticisms in relation to FoE and its fund.

Article 47 gives the president of the republic, based on a submission from FoE’s head and after approval by the board of directors, the power to transfer ownership of funds or assets privately owned by the state or any of its affiliated bodies, as well as shares or stakes in state-owned companies or companies in which the state has a stake, to the sovereign fund, without requiring presentation to parliament or parliamentary approval. Article 48 allows the fund to manage funds or assets owned by the state, its bodies or its companies through an agreement with the entity that owns or holds the asset. Article 51 allows the fund to acquire, merge with, or take control of equivalent national funds of a sovereign, economic, or investment nature that are fully owned by the state, by presidential decree and after approval by the board of directors and the cabinet. Article 53 gives the fund the power to contract directly with individuals, funds, companies, banks, financial institutions and local and foreign bodies inside and outside Egypt, in accordance with its internal regulations and without being bound by the laws, regulations and decisions in force in the state administrative apparatus or any other body.

The law places the tools of regulation, oversight and collection in FoE’s hands. It sets the rules governing work inside sustainable development zones, grants approvals, manages or invests assets, establishes inspection systems for the entities operating inside them, and receives the proceeds of fines and penalties.

3. A Broad Exemption From Public Administration and Procurement Laws

Under Article 10 of the promulgating law, as noted above, FoE is removed from the scope of several laws regulating public administration in Egypt, including the Civil Service Law, the law regulating government procurement, the maximum income law, the law governing public sector authorities and companies, and the Public Business Sector Companies Law.

At the same time, Article 10 of the draft law gives FoE’s board of directors the power to issue its own internal regulations on administrative, financial and technical affairs, human resources, contracts and procurement, without being bound by the government rules currently in force.

4. Public Assets Under a Separate Financial Regime

The draft law creates a closed financial system around FoE and its funds, built on three interlinked tracks: transferring or managing public assets; retaining, independently, the revenues and surpluses generated from managing and investing those assets; and placing some of the financial burdens that should be borne by the fund on the public treasury, without explicitly requiring that any share of FoE’s revenues or profits be transferred back to the treasury.

4.1. Expanding FoE’s Asset and Resource Base

Articles 16, 17 and 18 incorporate the funds and assets allocated to FoE into its capital, provide for their valuation at market value, and make the returns from investing and exploiting those assets, the proceeds from managing and disposing of state-owned private property, and the returns from overseeing public property of the state part of FoE’s own resources. This track extends to the “Future of Egypt Sovereign Wealth Fund — Pyramids of the Nile,” with Article 47 allowing funds or assets privately owned by the state or any of its affiliated bodies, as well as shares or stakes in state-owned companies or companies in which the state holds a stake, to be transferred to the fund. Article 48 also allows the fund to manage funds or assets owned by the state, its bodies or its companies, while Article 75 opens an additional path by allowing FoE to be delegated authority to oversee public property, or to manage, exploit and dispose of private property belonging to state bodies.

4.2. Revenues Not Automatically Returned to the Treasury

Against this expanding asset and resource base, Article 72 excludes the application of laws that require certain entities to transfer a share of their balances or surpluses to the public treasury. As a result, FoE’s surpluses, the returns of the sovereign fund, and the surplus of the service fund do not automatically enter the state budget. Any transfer of a share of these funds remains dependent on a later decision by the president of the republic, based on a submission from the minister of finance and after seeking the opinion of the board of directors.

4.3. Burdens Borne by the Treasury

The government’s draft attempted to combine FoE’s retention of its surpluses with shifting part of its tax and financial obligations onto the treasury. The parliamentary committee, however, deleted the provision that would have required the treasury to pay taxes and fees on behalf of FoE and its two funds, and instead regulated tax and social insurance arrears by requiring FoE to pay them in installments. Even so, Article 72 remained unchanged, allowing the surpluses of FoE and its two funds to stay outside automatic transfer to the public treasury.

This arrangement moves public assets and resources into a separate financial framework governed by special budgets and internal regulations. Its risks are heightened by the lands and infrastructure projects that have passed to FoE in recent years, including the lands of Future of Egypt and the New Delta, as well as lands reallocated from other public bodies, in addition to ongoing disputes over land whose holders say they possess contracts or official documents proving their claims.

5. Undefined Oversight Over an Authority Managing Public Assets

The joint parliamentary committee amended the article regulating oversight by the Accountability State Authority (ASA), deleting the paragraph that had limited its role to preparing annual reports on FoE and the two funds’ performance indicators based on their financial statements. The deletion came after several members of parliament objected that the wording could be understood as setting an exclusive limit on the scope of the ASA’s oversight, reducing it to a narrow review confined to performance indicators. In its report, which the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) reviewed, the committee explained that the effect of the deletion was to ensure “the application of the general rules governing the ASA’s oversight of FoE,” meaning that oversight would not be confined to performance-indicator reports, but would extend to the auditing and supervisory powers established by law and the constitution.

The committee also amended the provision on FoE’s annual report, requiring it to be submitted to the Speaker of the House of Representatives in addition to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, in an attempt to broaden parliamentary oversight of FoE’s work.

This amendment still falls short of clearly settling the nature or scope of the oversight intended. It does not clarify whether oversight extends in the same way to the sovereign fund, the service fund, affiliated companies, or all assets managed by FoE. Nor does it clarify the relationship between ASA oversight and the external auditor, or whether oversight reports will be presented to the House of Representatives alongside FoE’s annual report, or made available to the public.

The seriousness of this gap becomes clear when considering the nature of the funds managed by FoE. The law transfers state-owned assets and land to FoE and grants it broad powers to manage and invest them, while allowing it to retain independent budgets and special funds. In such a model, a general reference to unspecified oversight rules is not enough. Clearer guarantees are needed to ensure effective financial and administrative oversight, the publication of financial statements and reports by oversight bodies, and the ability of the House of Representatives and the public to monitor how these assets are managed and disposed of.

6. Restricting Legal Challenges and Public Accountability

In the government’s draft law, Article 73 restricts the admissibility of lawsuits and appeals challenging the validity of transactions undertaken by FoE, the sovereign fund, the service fund, or affiliated companies and entities in relation to the funds or assets subject to those transactions. Under the text, such cases may only be brought by the parties to those transactions, mirroring the provisions of Law No. 32 of 2014 on government contracts. The article also restricts the possibility of holding the contracting parties accountable, including in cases filed before the law’s passage, with only one exception: where a final judgment has been issued against one of the contracting parties in a public funds crime.

The danger of this article is that it follows provisions allowing state assets to be transferred, managed, invested and valued inside FoE and its funds. In other words, the restriction on litigation here concerns transactions that may affect public land, assets and resources, or the rights of stakeholders with a direct interest in land, water or local economic activity.

The right to litigation is not a procedural obstacle, but a basic safeguard for protecting public funds and the rights of those harmed. Restricting it could deprive stakeholders, including local communities, workers, and those affected environmentally or economically, of the ability to challenge decisions that may affect their direct interests or resources.

7. Re-engineering Resources: What FoE’s Expansion Means for Land and Water

Over the past few years, FoE has issued and implemented far-reaching water and agricultural decisions, even though its founding decree and the limits of its mandate were not clear to the public. Its role has extended to projects on the scale of the Future of Egypt Canal, which transfers water from the Rosetta branch of the Nile to the Western Desert to irrigate lands in the New Delta. Its projects also rely on transferring treated agricultural drainage water from the old Delta to the lands of the New Delta project, which is allocated to major investors.

These decisions do not concern FoE alone. The water of the Rosetta branch is a limited resource on which existing areas of the Delta depend. In 2018, the Ministry of Irrigation had in fact denied the existence of an approved project to extend a canal to the same New Delta area, stating at the time that no additional Nile water allocations were available for new projects. The project later returned, however, after FoE had become a huge entity leading the food security file.

Treated agricultural drainage water is not an unused surplus either. It is part of the reuse cycle within the Delta, and farmers and agricultural areas depend on it to offset shortages in irrigation water, according to published scientific research.

Despite this, no studies have yet been published explaining the environmental, social and water impacts of these massive transfers, the cost of pumping, treatment and operation, or the alternatives the state considered before extending water into the desert. Nor is there any publicly announced process for consulting farmers, water users and communities that may be affected by reduced irrigation water or reduced reuse water.

Here, again, the danger of the draft law becomes clear. FoE has already acted in areas affecting natural resources on this scale before sufficient information was available about its legal basis or the impact of its projects. The draft law then comes along to grant it broader powers to entrench similar decisions in the future. Article 34 gives it the authority to issue a self-executing “single approval” for establishing, operating or managing a project. Article 75 allows FoE to be delegated authority to manage, exploit or dispose of private property belonging to state bodies, or to oversee their public property, while Article 73 restricts the admissibility of challenges to contracts and agreements concerning funds and assets.

Decisions affecting land, water, energy and the environment therefore cannot be allowed to pass without publishing impact studies, data on water sources and costs, and the boundaries of the affected land, and without giving stakeholders a genuine opportunity to object and challenge them.

Creating sustainable development zones, issuing “single approval,” managing utilities or exploiting assets are not neutral administrative procedures when they relate to projects that depend on diverting water, energy and infrastructure to new lands. These decisions affect the distribution of resources between existing areas and newly created ones, and may affect the rights of local communities and existing users of land and water.

8. A Parallel Service Fund for Social Protection and Public Services Programs

The law creates, within FoE, a parallel channel for intervention in social protection and public services. Article 55 provides for the establishment of the “Future of Egypt Service Fund — Daem,” while Article 56 defines its purpose as helping the state achieve social justice, provide means of social solidarity, and ensure equality, fairness and equal opportunity.

Article 59 gives the fund a role in assisting state bodies in establishing service, social and development projects in the fields of education, research and development, training, health, culture, infrastructure and adequate housing. Article 64 also allows the service fund, by presidential decree and after approval by the board of directors and the cabinet, to acquire, merge with, or take over the subordination of national funds of a service, social or development nature that are fully owned by the state.

Article 67 grants the service fund the advantages, exemptions, incentives, guarantees and facilities granted to the Tahya Misr Fund, a public fund affiliated with the cabinet and sponsored by the president of the republic. The Tahya Misr Fund was established under Law No. 84 of 2015 to finance development and social projects through donations, grants and other resources specified by law. It operates outside the state budget while remaining subject to the provisions of its own law.

EIPR recognizes the importance of supporting social and service programs. But creating a fund with these powers inside an authority with its own rules and budget shifts part of social spending into a special track that is less connected to state budget rules and parliamentary oversight mechanisms. Funding for education, health, housing and social protection should be based on announced policies, traceable budgets and clear criteria for allocating resources, while complying with the constitutionally mandated spending shares for education, health and scientific research.

The government relies on distributing some spending outside the functional classification of the state budget, then counting it as spending on education and health in order to show compliance with constitutional spending requirements, while the actual shares directed to these sectors remain below the levels set by the constitution. Moving part of social spending to bodies or funds that do not publish their budgets makes it harder to know the real spending priorities, the scale of available resources, and the beneficiaries.

This comes at a time when the state budget is under heavy pressure from debt burdens, alongside restrictions on spending on service facilities, the expansion of efforts to turn some of them into profit-generating facilities, and a decline in actual subsidy spending. This path further undermines the principle of budget unity, both through revenues that go to special and sovereign funds outside the budget and through expenditures distributed through tracks that are difficult to trace. EIPR has previously criticized this approach for weakening transparency and allowing an accounting presentation that does not necessarily reflect the actual scale of spending on basic services.

9. No Guarantees for the Right to Information and Participation

Although the law gives FoE the authority to create databases, manage development zones, deal with local and foreign investments, and issue licenses and decisions that have a direct impact on resources, land and utilities, it does not include sufficient corresponding obligations to publish information. The draft law does not clearly require the publication of asset-transfer contracts, feasibility studies, environmental and social impact assessment reports, water-use data, investor-selection criteria, or annual financial performance reports in a form accessible to the public.

Without these obligations, the public will continue to face far-reaching decisions without sufficient knowledge of their justifications, costs, parties, or outcomes. This weakens the ability to track the management of public assets and natural resources, especially in an authority that operates under its own internal regulations and enjoys broad exemptions from general rules.

For years, FoE has expanded into the management of land, projects and broad economic files, while its founding decree remains unpublished in the Official Gazette. Decisions allocating land and creating entities linked to FoE were published one after another, but the text defining the basis of FoE’s existence and the limits of its mandate remained absent from the public domain.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee’s Proposed Amendments: Positive but Insufficient

After the draft law was referred to the House of Representatives, the joint committee introduced extensive amendments to the government’s text, affecting 67 out of 80 articles.

Although the committee eased some of the burdens on the public treasury by deleting the provision that would have required the state to pay the taxes and fees owed by FoE and its two funds, it also amended the provision on social insurance arrears so that FoE would pay its share over four years without interest. The treasury, however, will remain responsible for taxes, fees, fines and other financial obligations incurred by FoE before the law enters into force. The amendments therefore reduced the proposed burdens on public funds, but did not remove them entirely.

The committee also limited the scope of the law’s application to lands whose ownership had already passed to FoE, replacing wording that could have allowed a broader interpretation of its mandate. But this limitation remains incomplete without the publication of a clear inventory of the lands that have already been transferred to FoE, the entities from which they were transferred, the decisions and agreements under which the transfers took place, and the dates and values of those transfers. So far, the public still lacks a complete picture of the lands that have passed to FoE, or the legal basis on which their ownership was transferred.

The amendments also included a slight change requiring the creation of new sustainable development zones to be approved by the House of Representatives in a plenary session, rather than remaining solely an administrative decision within FoE and the executive branch. But the amendment left the door open to the creation of new zones when the House of Representatives is not in session, requiring only that the matter be presented to the House Bureau and that the House be notified when it reconvenes. Another amendment requires FoE to submit its annual report to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, alongside the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister.

In addition, the committee set a cap on fee increases inside sustainable development zones. It also deleted a paragraph that had created ambiguity over foreign ownership of real estate in areas of a strategic nature. The committee further amended the provision on FoE’s head, limiting the granting of ministerial rank to employment and financial treatment, thereby removing some of the constitutional ambiguity raised by the initial wording.

The committee also softened the wording of the exceptions related to the consolidation or merger of funds. Instead of stating that these operations may be carried out “notwithstanding any other law,” it used narrower wording that allows some applicable provisions and procedures to be set aside, without giving the presidential decree the power to override the laws themselves. Even so, the consolidation of funds or the transfer of their subordination will still take place through a special track that differs from the ordinary rules applied to public bodies.

The amendments also added an important exception: FoE’s funds are considered private funds, except for anything allocated for public benefit. This is intended to ensure that assets of a public-service nature are not disposed of as if they were FoE’s private property.

In return for these restrictions, the amendments added new powers for FoE. They expanded its scope of work to include service activities alongside economic activities, and added a chapter granting it the power to impose administrative financial penalties for violations within its mandate. Although the chapter includes safeguards such as requiring reasons for the decision, notifying the violator, hearing their defense, and allowing grievances to be filed, this new power deepens the problem of combining roles inside FoE itself. FoE sets the rules, grants licenses, engages in investment and operation, then monitors violations and imposes penalties for them. A court challenge also does not automatically suspend enforcement of the penalty, unless the court decides otherwise.

These amendments give FoE a financial resource directly linked to its power to impose penalties. The proceeds of penalties are first transferred to the public treasury, but the treasury is then required to allocate an equivalent amount to support FoE’s resources. In this way, punitive authority is not separated from financial interest: the more penalties FoE imposes, the greater the amount that returns to its budget from the public treasury.

The committee also introduced a limitation period, under which FoE’s right to take administrative penalty measures expires five years after the violation.

The central financial problem remains in place as long as FoE and its two funds remain outside the rules requiring surpluses to be automatically transferred to the public treasury. Deleting the provision that would have placed some burdens on the treasury reduces the cost of the government’s draft law to public funds, but it does not address the problem of an independent financial track that retains revenues and surpluses inside FoE and its funds, instead of integrating them into the ordinary rules of the state budget and parliamentary oversight.

Nor is requiring parliamentary approval for the creation of new zones enough on its own to ensure accountability. Parliamentary approval must be preceded by the disclosure of sufficient information about the boundaries of the zone, the lands that will pass to FoE, water and energy sources, feasibility studies, environmental, social and water impact assessments, and rights-holders or affected communities. The committee did not require any of this in its amendments. Without it, oversight of the creation decision remains separate from the public’s right to information and the right of those harmed to participate and challenge the decision.

EIPR welcomes the amendments that eased some burdens on the public treasury, affirmed the oversight of the Accountability State Authority (Egypt’s central auditing body), and expanded the oversight role of the House of Representatives. But it believes that the committee’s amendments did not alter the basic structure of the draft law. FoE remains an entity with broad powers, directly subordinate to the president of the republic, enjoying financial, technical and administrative independence, and combining planning, rule-making, licensing, allocation, investment, asset management, oversight and collection. The committee also added service activities to its mandate and granted it the power to impose financial penalties, while its surpluses remain outside automatic transfer to the public treasury, and the guarantees for transparency, participation and the right to litigation remain far below the scale of the powers granted to it.

Conclusion: Safeguards and Amendments Needed Before the Draft Law Is Passed

The broader the powers of a public body, the greater the need for clearer rules on transparency, oversight and litigation, especially when land, water, public assets and resources at the heart of economic and social rights are at stake.

In its current form, the draft law gives FoE a legal framework for an expansion that began before the law itself, amid a clear lack of available information about its founding decree, mandate, budgets and contracts. This framework combines the powers of planning, licensing, investment, oversight and collection, alongside independent budgets, special internal regulations and broad exemptions from the laws governing public bodies.

EIPR therefore calls for the following:

1. Publish FoE’s founding decree and all previous decisions and agreements that granted it mandates, assets, land or powers before the law was passed.

2. Define FoE’s scope of work in the law itself, rather than leaving the addition of sectors or the definition of a “national project” to later decisions, except through clear legislative approval and published criteria. A clear boundary should also be drawn between FoE’s mandate and the mandates of the various ministries, government bodies and authorities subject to legislative oversight.

3. Separate regulatory, licensing and oversight powers from investment and operational powers, so that FoE is not, at the same time, the rule-maker, the beneficiary of those rules, the body granting approvals, and the authority responsible for inspection and collection.

4. Do not transfer ownership of assets, land or stakes in state-owned companies to FoE or its sovereign fund without parliamentary approval, and without publishing an independent valuation of the asset, the reasons for the transfer, and the terms of management or investment.

5. Stipulate a clear and mandatory share of FoE and its funds’ surpluses to be transferred to the public treasury, rather than leaving the transfer of all surpluses to a later decision.

6. Subject FoE and its funds to public financial oversight, including the submission of detailed financial statements, performance reports and the observations of the Accountability State Authority (ASA) to the House of Representatives, and the periodic publication of those audit reports. This is a point that could also apply to many economic bodies and institutions that manage public funds in Egypt.

7. Publish the value of the obligations that the public treasury will bear on behalf of FoE under Articles 8 and 9 of the promulgating law, including taxes, feel, fines and late-payment charges.

8. Subject major contracts and procurement to rules of public announcement, competition and disclosure, including publication on the government procurement portal previously created by the government as part of the IMF program’s conditionality, as well as the publication of contractor data, financial values and selection criteria upon award, in order to ensure more transparent procedures that help combat corruption.

9. Exclude environmental, water and health approvals from the “single approval” system, and do not approve any sustainable development zone or resource-intensive national project before publishing environmental, social and water impact studies, as well as data on water use, sources, and the cost of transferring and treating it.

10. Transfer the proceeds of the “Daem” service fund to the public treasury, while stipulating that they be used specifically for social spending.

11. Amend Law No. 32 of 2014 on regulating certain procedures for challenging state contracts, to guarantee the right of any party with a serious and direct interest to challenge contracts involving public assets, land or resources, rather than limiting challenges to the contracting parties and holders of personal or real rights over the assets subject to the contract. The amendment should include safeguards against vexatious lawsuits without closing the door to judicial oversight of the disposal of public funds.