President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified Sunday the law regulating the Future of Egypt Authority for Sustainable Development, enacting legislation that drew fierce criticism from opposition lawmakers and rights groups over its sweeping powers.
When the bill first became public, it drew criticism for enabling the Future of Egypt Authority’s expansion and granting it unprecedented exceptional powers that combine conflicting regulatory, investment, and oversight functions under a single body.
According to a policy paper by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, these powers include planning, licensing, land allocation, investment, and the imposition of financial penalties.
Despite the rights-based objections, the final version of the law, published in the Official Gazette on Monday, retains the agency’s broad powers.
Future of Egypt will be responsible for setting development strategies, issuing licenses and approvals, investing in and managing assets, conducting oversight and inspections, and ultimately imposing administrative financial penalties on violators.
Contrary to the Initiative’s recommendations, the law also preserves the exceptional mechanism for transferring state assets to the agency’s funds. Article 52 continues to authorize the president, upon the recommendation of the agency’s head and board of directors, to transfer ownership of any state-owned assets or property—whether in use or unused—or government shareholdings in state-owned companies to the agency's Nile Pyramids Sovereign Fund, without requiring prior approval from parliament.
At the same time, the final version of the law grants parliament oversight over the establishment of sustainable development zones owned by the agency and the allocation of their resources. Formerly affiliated with the Air Force, the Future of Egypt Authority has now been reclassified under the new law as “a national agency of a special nature” reporting directly to the president.
The armed forces’ economic activities have long drawn criticism, most notably from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has called for reducing the state’s role in competing with the private sector. The Cabinet, however, maintains that private companies account for nearly 80% of Egypt’s gross domestic product.
Under the new law, the government is required to submit to parliament’s plenary session any presidential decrees transferring ownership of government land or facilities located within sustainable development zones to the Future of Egypt Authority.
According to lawmakers who spoke earlier to Al Manassa, opponents of the legislation engaged in heated parliamentary debates in an effort to secure parliamentary oversight over decisions transferring public resources to the authority, amid concerns that Future of Egypt was evolving into what the government’s own draft suggested was effectively a parallel government.
Responding to criticism that the law would place additional burdens on the state budget, the final version removes a provision requiring the public treasury to pay the employer’s share of the authority’s social insurance contributions. Instead, the amended law allows the authority to pay those contributions in installments over four years.
The final text also removes a provision that would have required the public treasury to cover value-added tax and any other taxes or fees imposed on the authority, in exchange for assets or financial returns transferred by the Future of Egypt Authority to the state budget.
In 2023, Egypt ended all tax exemptions for state-affiliated entities, including those belonging to the armed forces, as part of its IMF-backed economic reform program.
The move resulted in the collection of 67.4 billion Egyptian pounds in taxes from previously exempt entities during fiscal year 2024/25.
However, the final version of the law retains an exemption for the authority from legislation requiring certain public entities to transfer specified portions of their balances or budget surpluses to the state treasury. Instead, it leaves it to the president to determine what portion of the authority’s funds, if any, will be transferred to the state budget.
The final law also fully adopts provisions restricting the right to litigation and limiting judicial oversight of public assets, despite recommendations by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights to the contrary. Article 90 stipulates that lawsuits or appeals seeking to invalidate contracts or land allocation decisions involving the authority or either of its funds may only be brought by the contracting parties themselves, unless a final criminal conviction has been issued against one of the parties in a public funds case. This effectively shields the authority’s dealings involving public assets from judicial review through public interest litigation.
The authority’s expanding acquisition of state assets has raised questions about the government’s commitment to its pledge to reduce the state’s role in economic activity, a commitment made to the IMF under the current reform program, which is due to conclude later this year.
