*Name has been changed to protect the interviewer’s identity. It was a tedious week for 55-year-old Youssef Ezzeldin as he searched for a vacant hospital bed for his son’s tonsillectomy. Eager to offer his 7-year-old a relaxed experience, he reluctantly refused to settle for a public hospital in spite of free treatment. After countless calls and visits, Ezzeldin finally managed to book a surgery appointment through a relative who is a doctor at a private hospital in Heliopolis. State medical insurance covered two-thirds of the EGP 10,000 (about $600) cost. Things got worse when Ezzeldin realized his older son needed…
Author: Ola Noureldin
By Eid Said, Tax Consultant at Al Kamel Law Office, and a former First Undersecretary of State at the Egyptian Central Auditing Organization The Real Estate Tax was imposed in Egypt at the end of a ruling by Viceroy Mohamed Aly and limited to buildings in Cairo and Alexandria. That was until the issuance of Law No. 56 in 1954 that was eventually canceled by Tax on Buildings Law No. 196 for 2008, which introduced new provisions concerning assessing rent and imposing taxes on buildings. That encountered widespread criticism and forced the state to repeatedly delay implementation until Law No.…
“At the end of the day, it’s the government’s role to create the optimal entrepreneurial ecosystem that wins,” says Nihal El Chami, program coordinator at Falak Startups. It might be tempting to say that all it takes to create a successful startup is talent, an idea, and money. Good entrepreneurs know it involves much more than that: a suitable market, for instance, and a sustainable competitive advantage. They understand the finer details and fuse them to create a more insightful image of the macro environment. Within that macro environment is the real dominant player: Government. While venture capital firms support…
Burgeoning homegrown startup Swvl, a bus app founded two years ago in Cairo, raised $42 million in June on plans to expand further in Africa. The money came from international venture capital firms Vostok of Sweden, Dubai-based BECO Capital, China’s MSA and Endeavor Catalyst of New York. Swvl currently operates in Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan. However, it reportedly intends to move its headquarters to Dubai. “Investors and entrepreneurs look at Egypt’s legal framework as complicated and thus choose to go down the route of moving abroad,” says Cairo attorney Loay El Shawarby. Egypt has ramped up entrepreneurial activity during…