Egyptian customs releases $44 bln worth of goods since January 2024

Speaking to Al Mal News, Ghatouri emphasized that the customs agency prioritized the clearance of medicines and strategic goods, adding that customs revenues for the past fiscal year reached EGP 85 billion.

The head of customs also added that the amount of gold exempted from customs duties under the initiative that ended last June scored 4.5 tons.

Ghatouri also highlighted cooperation with the Ministry of Social Solidarity to coordinate procedures for importing cars for individuals with disabilities, where 68,000 were released last year out of 142,000.

He added that EGP 209 million were collected in fines on imported cars for people with disabilities over the past two months.

Since the beginning of this year, 2,967 cars for the disabled have been released compared to 68,000 last year, he noted.

 The past period has witnessed a great deal of controversy over stopping the customs release of cars for disabilities due to manipulation, selling their import authorization to natural persons, and benefiting from customs exemption without any justification, he explained.

 Egypt has set a monthly cap of 10,000 on the number of imported cars since June 2024.

These measures were taken to keep the total number of imported cars annually under 120,000, which is 33 percent more than in 2023, which amounted to 90,000.

However, 2023 data is much lower than 2021 and 2022, witnessing the crisis of holding goods at ports due to the dollar shortage, which amounted to 184,000 and 290,000 cars, respectively.

Egypt had previously released $63 billion worth of imported goods from its ports between the start of 2023 and November of that year, Ghatouri noted.

Egypt is coping with a shortage of US dollar liquidity in the local market and a financing gap estimated at $17 billion through 2026. This shortage has been impeding the release of essential goods from ports.