In a meeting in Cairo on Monday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly met with Al-Mansour Automotive CEO Ankush Arora and GM Egypt’s Chairman and Managing Director Tarek Atta to discuss manufacturing the vehicles in Egypt under the state’s plan to implement a green transition, a statement issued by the cabinet on Tuesday said.

Madbouly reiterated the importance attached by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to localise the automobile industry and auto feeding industries. 

The state is ready to provide full support to build meaningful partnerships in this field, especially with GM, which is an important partner to Cairo, the premier said.

Following the meeting, Madbouly inspected and was briefed on the specifications of a GM-manufactured electric vehicle model that is due for launch in Egypt in 2022.

The PM expressed the possibility of setting up various initiatives and programmes that can provide incentives and waives to those who purchase these vehicles. 

Madbouly was also briefed on more advanced models being manufactured by the company, the statement said.

Al-Mansour Automotive Company was founded in 1975 and became the primary dealer for GM in Egypt at the time. Currently, it is one of the largest GM distributorships in the world, selling over 75,000 vehicles a year.

On 1 December,  Al-Mansour Automotive Company and GM Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to study joint manufacturing of electric vehicles in Egypt.

Other efforts to localise the automotive industry

Earlier this month, Madbouly revealed that the government is preparing to launch ‘The Automotive Industry Strategy in Egypt’ by the end of the current year, noting that the step is meant to consolidate the localisation of the automotive industry and auto feeding industries, with the aim of attracting more investments to the vital sector.

Egypt seeks to localise these environment-friendly cars, reduce dependence on fuels, and keep pace with global progress in the automobile industry.

Last week, Egypt’s military production minister said the mass production of the Egyptian-Emirati bi-fuel pickup vehicles will begin by the end of the first half of 2022.

In August, Egypt and the UAE signed a cooperation agreement stipulating the establishment of a factory named the ‘Egyptian Emirates Company for the Automotive Industry’ in Cairo that will manufacture and market several models of pickup trucks that operate on natural gas and gasoline.

In July, Egypt inaugurated the first integrated fuel station in Cairo’s Abbasiya district which will serve vehicles running on natural gas, gasoline, and electric charging, with plans to set up a network of 3,000 electrical-charging stations in the near future.

Egypt was in talks with China’s Dongfeng Company to manufacture battery-powered cars. The production lines of the state-owned El-Nasr Automotive Company were due to locally produce the first-ever Egyptian electric vehicles — using Chinese blueprints — by mid-2022. However, talks between the two sides collapsed after an agreement over the price of important components was not reached, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Public Enterprise in November.