The Egyptian-British Chamber of Commerce has issued a summary of the latest changes taking place in Egypt regarding new regulations to export goods.
- In December 2015, the Customs Law has been amended by the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the following are now mandatory:
- All shipments should be presented with a legalised Certificate of Origin and a certified commercial Invoice (we do recommend full legalisation by the Egyptian Consulate in London) ;
- The invoice should comply with Article 8 of the Customs Law – name, address and phone of the producer are required.
- This was followed by the Decrees No. 991 & 992/2015 where registration of 24 products that are exported to Egypt for the retail market only have to be registered at the General Organisation for Export & Import Control. Full list of products and necessary documents is attached. The application can be submitted online MailGate warning: numerical links are often malicious: https://41.128.145.154/
- Central Bank of Egypt issued instructions to regulate the handling of export documentation in an attempt to reduce fraudulent valuation of invoices. Therefore the importation process whereby payment is via cash against documents can only be conducted by delivering the documents directly to the foreign bank (UK based), then the foreign bank delivers it directly to the local Egyptian bank. It is prohibited for any customer to him/herself directly receive delivered documents.
- Also, Central Bank of Egypt issued instructions that banks shall obtain a security deposit at the rate of 100% instead of 50% under the documentary credits opened for financing the import of commodities for account of the trading companies or governmental bodies. All exemptions from this practice can be found in the full version attached.
- On the 22nd of February Central Bank of Egypt amended the initial instructions (paragraphs C&D) to further exempt some companies and items related to Bank-to-Bank documents handling.
CBE’s instructions are not interfering in any way with the Ministry of Trade’s requirements of documents legalisation. Export documentation should still be submitted for certification and legalisation as in paragraph A.
For more information please see attached documents and hope these and the above clarify the current situation.
