Egypt's foreign ministry has agreed with Gulf countries that Egyptians living in these countries can travel home to Egypt to renew their expired electronic passports.

In a Tuesday statement, the ministry said that Egypt had agreed with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar that Egyptians could return to Egypt with an official written extension of the document.

The ministry has said that they are communicating with Oman and Bahrain in order to implement the same procedure there.

The move follows complaints from Egyptian residents in these countries about the time it was taking for their machine-readable passports to be renewed after they expired.

Badr Abdel-Aty, foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Tuesday that the move aimed to offer all consular services to Egyptians living abroad and to protect their interests. He also said that the ministry would take all necessary measures to accelerate issuing machine-readable passports to Egyptians abroad.

Around 3.5 million Egyptians live across the Arab world, according to the United Nations' International Organisation for Migration.

Egypt introduced electronic passports in 2008.

Passports that are not machine readable will no longer be valid for international travel from 24 November 2015, according to regulations from the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organisation.