On Sunday, the House will discuss government-drafted amendments to Law 12/2009 regulating the performance of private and non-profit universities.
A report prepared by the House's Education Committee said two articles of the law will be amended. "Article 18 of the law will be amended to state that ‘a Private Universities Council’ will be created, and that this council will be affiliated with the Ministry of Higher Education and chaired by the Minister of Higher Education," said the report, adding that "the first article speaking about "the Council of Private and Non-Profit Universities " will be changed to be "the Council of Private Universities and the Council of Non-profit Universities."
The report said the above amendments are in line with Article 21 of the constitution, which calls for encouraging the setting up of non-profit universities. "As a result, the law was passed in 2009 to allow the setting up of non-profit universities, and right now we have seven non-profit universities while several ministries and institutions are showing greater interest in establishing such kinds of universities," said the report.
Due to the above, said the Education Committee report, the government decided to amend the law to give greater incentives to public institutions to set up more non-profit universities by creating a separate council for each of the private and non-profit universities, instead of establishing one council for both universities. "This separation is necessary as the nature of private universities differs from that of non-profit universities," said the report.
The report indicated that the amendments also aim to define which institutions have priority access to the social work services offered by non-profit universities to those public institutions which contributed to their establishment. "These institutions have the priority to have access to social work services offered by non-profit universities because they are the ones who took the initiative of establishing such kinds of universities," said the report, adding that "the amendments will stipulate that public institutions which participated in setting up non-profit universities to approve the drafting and the changing of the internal bylaws of these universities."
"All of these are incentives aim to encourage public institutions to build more and more non-profit universities," the report said.
On Monday, the House will discuss a government-drafted law on "the Regulation and the Promotion of the Use of Financial Technology in Non-Banking Financial Activities."
A parliamentary report indicated that the draft law contributes to achieving the principle of financial inclusion and widening the scope of non-banking financial activities, improving their performance and cutting their cost. "As a result," the report said, "the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) will be solely authorized with implementing the law and taking all the measures necessary to boost and promote the use of modern financial technology (FinTech) in non-banking financial activities and the offering of related financial consultancies.”
Article two of the draft law states that the FRA will use the new legislation to achieve financial inclusion on as wide-scale as possible, and widen the scope of those who benefit from non-banking financial services.
To achieve this, the FRA will be in charge of taking the measures necessary to set up FinTech companies subject to this law, grant the related licenses and permits, ensure that FinTech companies abide by the criterion of transparency and rational governance, provide protection to dealers in non-banking financial markets and facilitate the adoption of modern and innovative technology in order to push the use of FinTech in the non-banking financial fields forward.
The FRA will be also responsible for collecting digital data, checking them and analysing its indicators through the use of software programmes and the instruments of financial intelligence to detect violations of laws regulating non-banking financial operations, money laundering activities and give an early warning on risks related to cash liquidity and other financial security issues.
The FRA will also exercise supervision on FinTech companies, and receive complaints which might be filed against these companies.
In addition, the FRA will also be in charge of preparing and publishing research and statistics necessary to promote the use of FinTech in non-banking financial activities, and raise public awareness of these activities in a competitive environment.
On Tuesday, the House will discuss reports on two foreign agreements with Japan and Austria. While the first aims to build a number of out-patient clinics for the children hospital affiliated with Cairo University, the second seeks to offer banking services to companies.
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