IDA seeks EGP 21 bn to fix industrial land shortage

The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) is asking parliament for EGP 21 bn over the next three years to complete infrastructure across 17 industrial zones — and lawmakers want to know why the authority isn’t self-financing. IDA Chairperson Nahed Youssef presented the request during parliamentary budget discussions, with the funding to be channeled through the Industrial Zones Support Fund. The request comes weeks after five new zones were transferred to the IDA’s jurisdiction, deepening pressure on the government to expand the supply of investment-ready land.

Parliamentary pushback: House Industry Committee Chairman Ahmed Bahaa Shalaby argued the industrial sector has the resources to self-finance and should maximize its own revenues instead of leaning on the state budget.

The IDA’s defense is structural: Vice Chairman Ahmed Abdel Raouf countered that the Industrial Zones Support Fund hasn’t received direct Finance Ministry funding since 2013, leaving the authority to rely on its own surpluses to cover infrastructure works that local administrations failed to complete in areas like Beni Suef and Giza.

The deeper point is that the IDA’s financial model is fundamentally different from agencies like the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA). The state intentionally subsidises industrial plots and offers flexible installment and usufruct plans to slash factory setup costs and attract capital. Because the IDA doesn’t sell land at market value like NUCA, it doesn’t generate massive revenues — and whatever proceeds it does collect are absorbed by existing infrastructure and zone-management costs, leaving it dependent on public funding to service new areas.

Access to serviced land remains a major hurdle: Securing serviced land is among the top obstacles for investors, the latest World Bank Enterprise Survey found, with companies waiting an average of 89 days for new electricity connections and 86 days for construction permits — significantly behind regional and lower-middle-income peers. The delays drive up upfront costs and tie up capital long before operations begin.

The supply-versus-pricing gap is now visible in transactions: The government offered nearly 6.5k industrial plots in 2025 across 23 governorates, but inadequate utility readiness has constrained their conversion into functioning factories. The constrained supply has produced striking pricing distortions: in 10th of Ramadan City, land has reached EGP 30k per sqm in some transactions, against the official EGP 6k rate.

The unserviced land proposal the government has rejected: Federation of Egyptian Industries board member Mohamed El Bahy tells EnterpriseAM the government has turned down proposals to offer unserviced land at lower prices for investors to develop themselves — a model that could reduce upfront costs and expand the available supply substantially. The government’s insistence on fully servicing zones before offering plots has severely limited supply and intensified competition. An industry source tells us they were left empty-handed in the last two allocation rounds, while many zones in Upper Egypt remain unequipped with the utilities needed to attract capital.

A new IDA offering

IDA announced its 14th plot offering through the Egypt Digital Industrial Platform yesterday — 400 newly serviced plots totalling 900k sqm across 24 industrial zones in 15 governorates, with applications opening today and running through to 11 June. Plot sizes range from 300 sqm to 22k sqm, calibrated for small, medium, and large manufacturers across food, engineering, chemicals, pharma, textiles, and building materials.

The offering comes with reduced application fees, a waived financial guarantee, and a smaller reservation deposit, all geared to lower the upfront costs that the Federation of Egyptian Industries has flagged as blocking investors. It’s the first IDA offering to specify target products plot-by-plot within each industrial activity, aimed at localizing feeder industries to secure supply chains and bridge import gaps, Youssef says.

Key developments to watch include Parliament's decision on the EGP 21 bn request, the 29 June allocation results from the 400-plot offering — which will tell us how strong demand actually is for serviced industrial land — and whether the unserviced-land proposal gets revisited as supply pressure intensifies. The 10th of Ramadan EGP 6k-vs-EGP 30k pricing gap is the clearest signal of how constrained the supply has become.