CABINET WATCH- Contractors Compensation Act high on Madbouly Cabinet agenda: The focus of the Madbouly Cabinet’s weekly meeting yesterday appears to have been paying out compensation to government contractors under the Contractors Compensation Act, according to a cabinet statement. Ministers reviewed a report, which showed that EGP 2.7 bn were disbursed to contractors out of a total EGP 3.2 bn in requested compensation for pre-November 2016 contracts that suddenly went underwater with the float of the EGP that month.

Cabinet also approved amendments to the Government Accounting Act that would make it mandatory for all government transactions be electronic. Finance Minister Mohamed Maait had issued a decision earlier in the day that would make all transactions between the government and private sector worth more than EGP 100k exclusively electronic. All transactions with the government will be electronic starting from January 2019, according to a ministry statement. The move to e-payments for government services was mandated by the National Payments Council. Other decisions taken by the cabinet yesterday include:

• Approving procedures to handle environmental disasters, which include tallying the list of facilities at risk of causing widespread environmental damage;
• Allowing the Military Productions Ministry to sign with the Aviation Information Technology company and Smart Tech to produce bread ration cards;
• Appropriating some 27,633 feddans for the development of new cities including New Luxor.