Egypt sells public land to private real-estate developers

Egyptian Minister of Public Business Sector, Hisham Tawfik, yesterday said that his ministry would change the zoning of 182 plots of industrial land owned by public sector companies and gradually sell them to the private sector.

“Egypt will soon begin selling state-owned land to help finance the restructuring of public sector companies,” Tawfik told reporters in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo.

The minister pointed out that the ministry was working on “issuing local permissions before it begins offering the plots for sale.” He didn’t give details on the plots’ locations or value.

The move came as part of the Egyptian government’s recently-announced plans to develop the country’s loss-making sectors including textile, chemical, pharmaceutical and metallurgical industries.

Real-estate developers in Egypt were reported to have been experiencing a slowdown in demand on luxury housing units, prompting companies to resort to new marketing and promotional methods such as increasing the repayment periods to between 10 and 15 years.