[ACCI-CAVIE] Egypt, the host of the Climate Change Conference (COP27) in November, aims to expand its presidential initiative of replacing old vehicles with others working with natural gas, Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said.

This will take place by engaging new cities and governorates to the initiative, Maait explained, noting that citizens of Upper Egypt’s Luxor and Aswan have been allowed to join the initiative.

This will contribute to increasing the number of beneficiaries from the initiative in a way that maximizes the efforts of green transformation and enables citizens to own new cars instead of vehicles that are more than 20 years old, Maait said.

The initiative’s website allows citizens to know the value of the monthly installments which extend to 7-10 years based on the type of the car, Maait said.

In this regard, the state’s treasury has endured a cost of LE 570 million for the green incentives to limit air pollution and reduce carbon emissions, the minister added.

As many as 23,730 vehicles have been allocated for the initiative and more than 23,447 old cars have been scrapped, Tamer Abdel Zaher, the initiative’s spokesman said.

The number of applicants eligible for the initiative have reached more than 40,000 on the initiative’s website, Abdel Zaher noted.

In December 2020, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ordered offering citizens with old vehicles a proper cash incentive in the event of replacing their vehicles with new ones that work with natural gas.

In January 2021, then-Minister of Trade and Industry Nevine Gamea said Egypt plans to convert 150,000 old vehicles to new ones working with natural gas as part of the intiative.

The state also seeks to scrap as many as 250,000 old cars and to replace them with new bi-fuel ones, Gamea said.

By ET and LB