Still-under-wraps amendments to the Investment Act will not offer cheap energy or natural gas feedstock as investment incentives, Investment Minister Dalia Khorshid said after a meeting of the Ismail cabinet’s economic group yesterday. Sources tell Al Masry Al Youm that cabinet is still ironing out the details on incentives for free zone and special economic zone companies. A second draft of the proposed amendments will be ready in “weeks,” Khorshid added. The minister had previously noted that the law would be ready to present to the cabinet at the end of the month. The government is sticking to its deadline of issuing the law before the year is out, said Khorshid, Al Ahram reports.

Don’t expect consensus from industry on the bill: The Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI) has renewed its call to scrap Khorshid’s amendments to the act and instead revive the pre-2015 act with some amendments, Al Borsa reports. The FEI’s investment committee met on Monday to discuss amendments to the old law, which it said it wouldn’t formally propose until discussing Khorshid’s draft with the minister.

Khorshid is set to hold a series of meetings with representatives of business associations next week. Her audience generally appears uniformly displeased with the draft. Then again, these are people who (in part, as we note above) apparently think they have a right to continue receiving subsidized gas…

On a related note, the Finance Ministry has reportedly begun assessing how to pay for the incentives mandated by the Supreme investment Council, particularly the tax incentives, Al Borsa reports. The ministry will complete a cost-benefit analysis of the incentives in the coming weeks.