Overview

Doing Business in Egypt 2014 measures business regulations and their enforcement in 15 Egyptian locations –Alexandria, Assuit, Aswan, Cairo, Damietta, Fayoum, Giza, Ismailia, Kharga, Mansoura, Port Said, Sohag, Suez, Tanta, and Zagazig– and 5 ports –Alexandria, Damietta, Port Said East, Port Said West and Sokhna. The report measures regulations affecting 5 stages of the life of a small or medium-size business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, enforcing contracts and trading across borders.

Where is it easiest to do business in Egypt?

Main Findings

• It is easier to start a business in Alexandria, Cairo, and Giza; deal with construction permits in Suez; register property in Port Said, and enforce contracts in Damietta.
• No city does equally well on all indicators and there are good practices to be found across many Egyptian cities.  
• The success of business startup one-stop shops proves that there is no need to go to Cairo to start a business. As a result, it is now as easy to start a business in Alexandria as in Cairo.
• Some Court of First Instance found successful ways to deal with high volumes of cases. Enforcing a contract in Damietta takes 7 months less than in Cairo.
• In Property registration, better coordination between Real Estate Registry and Surveying Authority results into shorter times.
• There is no need to reinvent the wheel: successful examples within Egypt. A hypothetical city adopting existing good practices found at subnational level, would rank 104 on the global Doing Business ranking, 24 positions ahead of Egypt’s current ranking (128).
• Despite a nationally unified construction law, there are large variations across locations in the clearances required before a construction engineer applies for a building permit. It is easier to deal with a construction permit in Suez, for example, where the necessary clearances and the building permit are issued directly by the Municipal Authority.
• In Trade, dealing with document requirements constitutes half of the time needed to import and two-thirds of the time required to export.

See trading across borders details on 5 port cities in Egypt.