They’ve got a golden license: Our friends at Hassan Allam Utilities, as well as developer Bloom Real Estate Development, truckmaker National Company for Transport Industry (N-MCV), and Vaccine & Biotechnology City Company were the recipients of the four new golden licenses awarded by the cabinet at the start of the month, the General Authority for Investment and Freezones (GAFI) said yesterday.

What we don’t know: GAFI didn’t disclose which projects were awarded the licenses. We weren’t able to find any publicly-available information about the ownership and operations of N-MCV.

And what we do: Vaccine & Biotechnology City is a company owned by the military’s National Services Projects Organization (NSPO), and is building a 115k m2 vaccine manufacturing complex on the Cairo-Ismailia desert road. Bloom Real Estate is planning a number of developments in New Zayed.

That makes 13 so far: Nine golden licenses were awarded to mega projects late last year, including a USD 5.5 bn green ammonia plant in Ain Sokhna and an EGP 8.8 bn home and electrical appliances manufacturing and assembly facility group in Menoufia. The GAFI statement doesn’t give details of the projects for which the four new firms have been granted licenses.

Golden licenses? Golden licenses fast-track new industrial and infrastructure projects. Also known as “single approval licenses,” they allow investors to require only one approval that covers everything from establishing the project, land allocation and building licensing, through to operation and management. You can check our guide on the golden license here.

More to come: GAFI is working on issuing new diamond and silver-tiered licenses to investors depending on each sector’s priorities, GAFI head Hossam Heiba told us in January. It’s also working with the Industrial Development Authority to release a new investment map with an estimated 1k available plots of land and 86 pilot projects in key industries up for grabs.

REMEMBER- The minimum capital requirement of EGP 200 mn for businesses looking to apply for golden licenses was scrapped back in December in a bid to make it easier for investors to obtain the licenses. Companies can apply for a golden license online through the cabinet’s website.