LEGISLATION-

House committee approves daylight saving comeback: The House Local Administration Committee yesterday approved a draft bill on the return of daylight saving. The bill received the greenlight from the cabinet earlier this month. If passed, it would see Cairo Local Time (CLT) pushed forward by one hour from the last Friday of April through the last Thursday of October.

The rationale: “Reducing power consumption through restoring daylight saving time will help reduce demand on foreign exchange and also boost the country’s natural gas exports,” the government said in an explanatory note.

The bill won’t be put up for a General Assembly vote until April at the earliest: The House yesterday adjourned sessions until 2 April.

Does daylight saving time really save energy? It’s long been controversial, and one of the most well-respected papers on the subject suggests it actually increased energy use slightly in one US state, where households used more energy to cool their houses in summer.

HOSPITALITY-

IHG Hotels + Arabella to open three new hotels in Egypt: IHG Hotels & Resorts and Arabella for Tourist & Urban Development will establish three new hotels in Cairo and the North Coast after signing contracts with the government this week, the Tourism Ministry said Monday. Together the new hotels will have more than 500 rooms, and are expected to open between this year and 2026.

Remember:The government wants to see the private sector build at least 290k new hotelrooms as part of its aim of attracting as many as 30 mn tourists a year by 2028.

INVESTMENT-

#1- Dina Farms could invest some EGP 380 mn this year: Qalaa Holdings’ dairy company Dina Farms plans to invest around EGP 380 mn this year to increase its production capacity, Qalaa Chairman Ahmed Heikal reportedly told Al Borsa. The company is also looking to add to its land portfolio and is holding discussions with the government and a private-sector firm to purchase two plots.

#2- Fresh + Cotherm to inaugurate EUR 8 mn factory: Egyptian home appliances maker Fresh and French firm Cotherm will inaugurate their EUR 8 mn heater component factory in Tenth of Ramadan today, Al Borsa reported. The factory will have three production lines to manufacture thermostats for water heaters.

MINING-

Gold production begins at large Iqat deposit: The state-owned Shalateen Mining Company has begun operations to extract gold from the Iqat gold mine in the Eastern Desert, the Oil Ministry said yesterday. The company has begun to drill, transport rocks to the extraction site, and grind them in preparation for the extraction of gold and the production of ingots — a process that was expected to commence in 4Q 2022. The deposit is estimated to hold around 1.3 mn ounces of gold.

WASTE MANAGEMENT-

Greek firm partners with Suez Canal Authority on new waste management company:Antipollution, a member of the Greek environmental firm V Group, has signed a shareholders agreement with two subsidiaries of the Suez Canal Authority to set up a local waste management company, according to a cabinet statement. Antipollution Egypt will provide solid and liquid waste management services to ships using the Suez Canal. Zaki Hashem & Partners served as the legal advisors to V Group and Antipollution, the law firm said in a statement (pdf).

STARTUPS-

Egyptian chatbot building platform WideBot launched an AI-powered product to help SMEs with tasks including marketing, to sales, to customer service, and to payments, according to a company press release (pdf). The platform’s new service — dubbed “Heloul” (Solutions) — is integrated with several social media platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Twitter, and its AI chatbot is capable of answering customers’ questions in several Arabic dialects, the statement reads. The AI startup is looking to expand its client portfolio to reach 100k clients in Egypt and Saudi Arabia by the end of 2024.

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