Egypt turned factory licensing into a notification-first workflow

Egyptian investors faced licensing delays that made starting or expanding factories painfully slow. A typical fix would have been to add more clerks to the same approval maze.

The World Bank-supported EASE program helped GAFI establish one-stop shops and helped the Industrial Development Authority simplify, automate and decentralize industrial regulation. A later grant funded electronic coordination among line ministries, local authorities and permit-granting entities.

The results were concrete: average business-license time improved 91%, from 320 days to 28. High-risk industrial licenses fell from 640 days to 55, and registration with GAFI moved from eight days to less than one day.

Let routine approvals start by notice

The one-stop shop changed the investor's interface from many offices to one accountable entry point.

Licensing by notification separated routine approvals from genuinely risky cases.

Digital coordination attacked the hidden wait: files moving among ministries and local authorities.

If regulation is meant to screen risk, do not force every low-friction application through the slowest high-risk path.

The World Bank reported that EASE ended in 2021 but left operating changes at GAFI and the Industrial Development Authority. During the program, more than 2,080 industrial land plots were allocated through GAFI's investment map, and the first online tender processed 1,141 bids for agricultural projects.