ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the neoliberal era in Egypt in the mid-1970s, successive governments have identified foreign direct investment (FDI) as a vital component of their economic growth strategies and sought to attract foreign investment by continuing to liberalise the FDI regime. Liberalisation measures included a wide range of incentives and privileges provided to foreign investors through new domestic FDI legislation while also ensuring limited intervention from the state. Moreover, as part of its efforts to attract FDI, Egypt decided to join the international investment regime by launching its Bilateral Investment Treaty network and signing the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Convention.
This chapter provides a critical review of Egypt’s FDI regime, illustrating how legislation and policies adopted over the past few decades have failed to attract FDI in terms of both volume and quality. It also demonstrates how in its efforts to attract FDI, Egypt has sacrificed its policy space to regulate and how that became particularly evident in the aftermath of the January 25 revolution in 2011.
