Retailers beware: The crackdown on pricing display begins this morning as the Supply Ministry launches a “sweeping inspection campaign” to see whether shops are complying with a requirement that they clearly display the prices of their wares. Industry representatives tell us most food producers are in compliance with the new regulations already and do not expect the campaign to have a significant direct effect on them. Previous amendments to the decree changed the requirement from having producers print manufacturer-suggested retail prices (MSRPs) on their goods’ packaging to just providing the figure in their invoices to retailers. The requirement is now for retailers to display the prices of products on sale.

…What you should keep an eye on here is how this “sweeping campaign” will affect smaller retailers and corner shops. Larger supermarkets already display prices fairly prominently in their outlets, but smaller shops and kiosks often don’t. So the question now is whether the campaign will result in wide-scale closures and penalties. If this is the case, then the campaign could also impact producers as they would see their sales channels limited — at least temporarily. Still, the market does not seem too concerned, with one industry insider telling us “there are more than 400,000 sales points across Egypt … the government does not have the power to effectively monitor all that.” He expects to see an intensified, and very public, crackdown on a limited number of shops that will fade away soon after and for business to return shortly to normal. We’ll be touching base with friends in the industry and will report back at the end of next week.

The crackdown traces its roots to a drive by the Consumer Protection Agency to clamp down on what it sees as price gouging by retailers during a period of spiraling inflation following the float of the EGP in late 2016.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s warning to the opposition yesterday is dominating international media coverage of Egypt this morning. The Associated Press writes that a “visibly furious” president sent a “sharp warning” as a “signal that authorities will tolerate no questioning of the legitimacy of the March 26-28 vote.” The president, speaking at the official opening of the Zohr supergiant gas field, “said he would not allow a repeat of the 2011 uprising.” We have more coverage in Egypt in the News, below, or you can go check out highlights from the speech now on the Associated Press, Reuters or Bloomberg

Where, oh where, has my investment map gone? Oh where, oh where could it be? There’s still no word from the Investment Ministry on when its long-awaited investment map will launch. Last we heard, it was due to have been unveiled at December’s Africa Investment Conference in Sharm. Repeated delays have prompted others around the cabinet table, including the Agriculture Ministry and even the Higher Education Ministry, to release their own investment maps, and the Trade and Industry Ministry released its own document last fall. Investment Ministger Sahar Nasr caught flak from Parliament over the delay in the map. In the meantime, we’re hearing that 65 of the proposed 600 projects will take place in Qena, according to Al Borsa.

The US Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at the last meeting of the Yellen era yesterday, but said that inflation would continue to rise this year, according to an official Fed statement. The Fed had projected three rate rises this year to match last year, which almost guarantees a bump at their next meeting in March. Inflation numbers came in below the Fed’s expectations despite solid employment numbers, Reuters reports. Expectations are that Jerome Powell, who takes the helm in a couple of days’ time, will largely maintain outgoing boss Janet Yellen’s policy line.

CI Capital’s 2018 MENA Investor Conference wraps up today. We have more in Speed Round, below.

Also this morning: A Saudi-Egyptian business forum gets underway today two days after a Saudi-Egyptian joint committee convened in Cairo to prepare for a Riyadh meeting in April that will focus on finding ways to boost trade relations, Youm 7 reports.

The rich are fleeing London: London is neck-to-neck with Lagos and Istanbul in terms of “net outflows of rich people,” according to a Global Wealth Migration Review picked up by Bloomberg. The report says that 5,000 HNWI left London in 2017, compared to only 1,000 coming in “as new taxes make it expensive to inherit and invest, and as Brexit prompts rich Europeans living in the UK capital to return home.”

Also worth a moment of your time this morning:

Big data could revolutionize economic and other policy making in government, the Financial Times suggests in its Big Read.

Are you a CEO? Get off social media. Bruce Nolop, former CFO of E*Trade and Pitney Bowes, speaks for all of us here when he writes for the Wall Street Journal that CEOs should staff off social media.

Speaking of social media: People are spending less time browsing Facebook, and the slowdown began before its recent changes to its new feed and saw it “lose daily users for the first time ever in the US and Canada,” Recode reports in coverage of the social media giant’s earnings. Shares whipsawed in after hours trading, rebounding after dropping sharply, CNBC notes.

The much touted Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More is now out. We are ashamed to admit that our business-book self-help jag sees it at the top of our TBR pile for the weekend, even though what we really should be reading is King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone.