House passage of the ride-hailing legislation is a step forward for the industry -Uber Egypt GM. Uber Egypt GM Abdellatif Waked said the act, which passed the House of Representatives on Monday, is one of the first of its kind in the region and will help drive growth of his industry. Uber is “quite happy” with the changes to the law, particularly clauses on data sharing and privacy, he told us yesterday. Here’s why:

Ride-Hailing Apps Act won’t force companies to share real-time data with the government. The controversial Articles 9 and 10 now strike a balance between data privacy and national security, Waked said. The two articles, which have changed drastically from their initial form, now “provide a lot of details on preserving user data privacy,” he said, explaining that article 9 especially was “toned down a lot,” as clauses that would have given the government unrestricted access to real-time data were scrapped and replaced with others that mandate ride-hailing companies to make information accessible only upon request.

Clauses stipulating onshore data storage were also removed from article 10 after Uber managed to convince legislators that cloud storage is the much safer option recommended by global tech companies and experts. “We take national security very seriously, but we also take our user privacy very seriously,” Waked said. “Uber never provides any government with real-time access to customer data and we always fight to protect their privacy.”

(We were wrong yesterday in our assertion that the House had signed off on the act without amending articles 9 and 10. The final text of the act requires ride hailing companies operating in Egypt to retain local user data for 180 days and to make information available to state agencies when requested. We’ve updated yesterday’s story on our website accordingly.)

So, what about the white taxis? The act gives ride-sharing companies three months to come up with a strategy to incorporate white taxis into their fleets. Earlier versions of the act had given the prime minister authority to essentially force ride-sharing companies to abide by a single set of guidelines to add regular cabs to their service. “Now it’s in the hands of the companies,” Waked said. “Uber already works with taxis in other countries, so we’ll take our learnings from there and spend the next three months studying the best way to incorporate them, because to us, it’s an absolute necessity to maintain a certain level of quality and safety.”

As usual, the fine print will be in the executive regulations, which will set final licensing fees and fines, which Uber believes are too high. The most important among those are the high licensing fees of EGP 1,000 the law sets for drivers, according to Waked. “We will be working over the next two months to make sure that the executive decrees that are issued take the drivers’ side,” he said, stressing the importance of keeping the service both economically sensible for drivers and affordable for users. Waked also expects the regulations to adjust licensing fees that companies have to pay, which could hinder new players from entering the market after they jumped “in the last minute” to a maximum of EGP 30 mn in the final draft from EGP 10 mn initially. The fee is payable by operators every five years.

As for the identifier or symbol that drivers will have to display, “those will likely be inside the car… [and] are not new to the industry,” Waked said, explaining that more than 65% of Uber’s drivers work on a part-time basis using their own private cars and “don’t necessarily want to brand themselves.”

Thinking along similar lines is Uber’s Dubai-based competitor Careem, which described the Ride-hailing Apps Act as a “a remarkable step for Egypt, Careem and our region,” in an emailed statement yesterday, the National reports. “It is the first time in any of Careem’s operating markets that a regulatory framework for ride-hailing has emerged from a consultative legislative and parliamentary process.”