ERRADA

Egyptian Regulatory Reform and Development Activity (ERRADA) is an Egyptian initiative to support the government’s efforts to build a regulatory management system to review and streamline business related regulations.

The Initiative was officially launched in 2008 by Ministerial Decree No. 1089/2008, which stipulated that it operates under the Sub-cabinet Committee for the Productive Sector. In March 2011, Prime Minister Decision 436/2011 assigned oversight of ERRADA to the Sub-cabinet Committee for Monitoring Economic Performance, chaired by the Minister of Finance.

ERRADA seeks to contribute to the implementation of reform plans adopted by the government since 2004 through the review of business related regulations and issue recommendations to enhance business environment by resolving the following issues: multiplicity of complex overlapping regulations; no clarity of valid regulations; absence of a system to identify implicitly repealed decrees; overlap of authorities issuing regulations; inconsistency in regulation drafting cycle across ministries; lack of specific mechanism to study the economic impact of new regulations.

Vision

Enhance business environment through better regulations.

Mission

Support government efforts to build a regulatory management system, based on a dialog between public and private institutions, aimed at increasing efficiency, competitiveness and creating more job opportunities.

Objectives

1. Identify all valid business related regulations through inventory.

2. Streamline business related regulations through review of inventory, in consultation with different segments of society (government, private sector and civil society).

3. Make all business related regulations accessible to the public through an electronic registry.

4. Seek to introduce regulatory impact assessment (RIA), in order to lay down the foundation for principles of transparency and decision making based on analysis.

In the initial stage, 11 ministries (Administrative Development, Agriculture, Finance, Health, Housing, Investment, Local Development, Petroleum, Tourism, Trade and Industry and Transport) joined the Initiative. A pilot was also launched in the Governorates of Cairo, Red Sea, and Alexandria to compile and review business related regulations.

To date, ERRADA have identified more than 37,000 regulations that affect business environment in Egypt and entered them on ERRADA electronic database.

Within the framework of cooperation with international organizations, which seek to support national reform efforts in Egypt, ERRADA has received since its inception technical and financial assistance from USAID and SIGMA, OECD/EU through: workshops to raise capacity of staff in the Initiative; study tours to countries that have undergone regulatory reform and/or administrative simplification, such as Croatia, Moldova, Turkey and Ireland; hosting international experts to learn about experiences of other countries in enhancing business environment through regulatory reform; providing equipment to facilitate the work of ERRADA.

SIGMA undertook a mission during the period 24–27 May 2009 to assess ERRADA and. The mission completed its report in July 2009, in which it commended ERRADA on its effort and provided recommendations to contribute to developing the framework for institutionalizing the Initiative in order to create an effective regulatory management system in Egypt..[2]

ERRADA’s efforts towards achieving regulatory reform in Egypt have been subject to scrutiny in the Fifth Dimension of the OECD’s Business Climate Development strategy (BCDS) Phase 1: Policy Assessment. The BCDS, which draws upon OECD’s tools and guidelines, aims to support individual countries in improving their business climate by assessing investment-related policy reforms. According to BCDS, ERRADA has generally attained positive results while still at an early stage, as it has successfully met its key targets of implementation of inventory, review and depository phases. It commends ERRADA for its strategy, which it describes as follows: "Egypt’s ERRADA strategy is well-structured, benefiting from international expertise in regulatory reform and generous technical assistance from donor institutions (USAID, CIDA/IDRC, and the IFC). Egypt has built its ERRADA strategy on good practices from other emerging markets undergoing fast-paced regulatory reform." (page 14 )[3]