Apart from the legislation mentioned above, key laws that were passed this year included:

• The Civil Service Actwhich aimed to implemented reform of the bureaucracy, but ended up being a very watered down version of its original goals;
• The Tax Dispute Resolution Act has expert committees, rather than courts, handling tax dispute cases for one year to accelerate the resolution of tax disputes and clear the backlog;
• The Food Safety Authority Act will establish a new industry regulator to ensure that food products in the market meet the specified health and safety standards;
• The Anti-Illegal Immigration Act sets more stringent punishments for human trafficking offenses;
• The Church Construction Act contains articles that tie the size of a church being built in any one district to the size of its Christian population.

Laws to watch out for during 2017 include:

• The Industry Permits Act is expected to minimize the wait time for industrial licenses to as little as 30 days;
• The Automotive Directivewhich aims to give incentives to the local auto industry to go further up the value chain into manufacturing;
• The Consumer Protection Act, will reportedly grant the cabinet the authority to fix prices for a number of “strategic” goods for a set period of time;
• The Labor Act outlaws discrimination in the workplace and seeks to strike a balance between the needs of workers and their employers by setting regulations that guarantee the rights of both;
• The Media Act, or what we call part 1 of the legislation, establishes three new regulatory bodies to monitor the activities of state-owned and independent media in Egypt;
• The new NGOs law seeks to safeguard national security by regulating the work of civil society in Egypt, covering everything from licensing and permits to sources of funding and follow-up;

There might be more irons in the fire still. The recent attack on a Coptic cathedral in Cairo gave rise to calls for amendments to Egypt’s penal code and Criminal Procedures Act that would expedite legal proceedings for cases of terrorism and allow for military trials. According to media reports throughout the year, other laws we might be seeing during 2017 include a legislation from the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority to govern factoring companies, a legislation to ease conditions for SMEs — such as credit facilitation and financing schemes, an anti-discrimination law, a law for intellectual property protection, and laws against data theft and identity fraud.