Three megaprojects now interact with the state through a single body, and two more are on the way. Ras El Hekma and Arkan Palm’s 205 already hold investment zone licenses, Qatari Diar’s 4.9k-feddan Alam El Roum launched its zone on 18 October, and Capital Group Properties’ Al Burouj and Talaat Moustafa Group’s The Spine are next. A zone gives developers faster paperwork and tax breaks. Inside each one, the General Authority for Investment and Freezones (Gafi) handles their dealings with every government body, while the tax breaks come from the 2017 Investment Law (pdf), each with its own conditions.

It starts with a single request: Once a company registers in the zone, Gafi acts as “its agent with every government body, handling the communications and paperwork the company would otherwise manage itself,” Gafi CEO Mohamed Awad tells us, and the process moves much faster that way.

Each zone also gets its own board of directors and executive board, and every approval runs through them, Investment Minister Mohamed Farid said at the Alam El Roum launch. He described the zone as a complement to the golden license, a single cabinet decree that lets one strategic project set up, operate, and secure its land and building permits in one go. “The time saved on permits shows up in cost and returns,” Arkan Palm CEO Amr Badr El Din tells us, though he gave no specific figures.

Fast doesn’t mean instant, however: Securing Alam El Roum’s license took a full year of planning and negotiation, said Taleb Al Athba, Qatari Diar’s chief of project delivery and development for Asia and Africa. Drafting the contracts alone took three months of intense talks, Housing Minister Randa El Menshawy added. The two sides signed in November 2025, the master plan cleared in June 2026, and the cabinet approved the zone in September.

The tax breaks are where the conditions come in: Gafi acts for investors, but the incentives come from the law, Awad says. The general package covers a five-year exemption from stamp tax and notarization fees on incorporation papers, credit contracts and land registration, plus a flat 2% customs duty on machinery imported for setting up. The special incentive lets newly established companies deduct 50% of their investment costs from taxable income in the areas most in need of development. Elsewhere, the rate drops to 30% and covers only listed activities, among them tourism and national strategic projects named by the Supreme Council of Investment, and real estate development isn’t on that list. The deduction tops out at 80% of paid-in capital and lasts up to seven years. Any additional incentives come only once operations start, with Gafi’s sign-off.

Size alone doesn’t decide who qualifies, either: The law sets no minimum, and Gafi’s zone directory runs from City Center Almaza at 29 feddans to Ras El Hekma at 36.7k. What each zone does matters too, across tourism, commercial, medical, and mixed-use projects, with homes as part of the mix at places like Ras El Hekma. “Gafi weighs size alongside each project’s nature and services,” Awad tells us, but the authority doesn’t publish how much each factor counts.

The state takes its own cut, and the terms vary by transaction. At Alam El Roum, the New Urban Communities Authority gets 15% of revenues once the project recovers its full investment costs, plus a share of the residential units. The government will take 35% of Ras El Hekma’s revenues once it starts operating. A preliminary agreement with an unnamed Emirati investor for the 642-feddan Jefaira plot gives it a 20-30% annual share of future revenues.

“The investment zone fits Alam El Roum better than a freezone would,” Awad tells us, because the project mixes tourism, logistics, industry, and services into one year-round city. The USD 29.7 bn project lies about 50 km west of Ras El Hekma, with EGP 220 bn going into its first phase.

Foreign money into property is rising, but the data can’t show how much of it the zones brought in. Non-residents’ property purchases, which count toward FDI, brought in a net USD 2.8 bn in FY2025/26, up from USD 1.9 bn a year earlier, according to Central Bank of Egypt figures (pdf). Net FDI reached USD 18 bn, including USD 3.5 bn from the Alam El Roum agreement.

More megaprojects are lining up: The cabinet approved a zone covering six service and commercial plots inside Al Burouj in Shorouk on 22 July at an estimated EGP 7.6 bn. On 30 July, it approved The Spine, a 506-feddan zone in Madinaty worth EGP 1.4 tn. Of the 21 zones decreed so far, 12 are operating, including the Mit Ghamr and Benha industrial zones, and nine are still under construction. The Spine’s license “will come through within days,” Awad tells us.

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