Strengthening the Compliance of the OIC Member States
to International Standards
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The EOS is the national TBT enquiry point and notification authority of Egypt; it serves to make
information available to all users and to answer questions and inquires. It is also committed to submit
notifications on changes in technical regulations and standards.
The Central Administration for Foreign Agricultural Relations at the Ministry of Agriculture and Land
Reclamation acts as the Egyptian SPS Enquiry point and National Notification Authority EP/NNA. The
Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation has also established an SPS committee to tackle the
scientific and technical aspects of SPS issues to be raised under the SPS national sub-committee that is
under the auspices of the Supreme national committee headed by the Minister of Trade & Industry.
To further enhance coordination and cooperation and recognizing the importance of transparency and
predictability, Egypt has devised a national coordination mechanism established by the Prime Minister
decree no. 2489/2007 to ensure enhanced transparency on Egypt’s TBT and SPS measures and to
address other WTO members TBT/SPS notifications. This mechanism aims at establishing systemic
coordination procedures in the context of Egypt’s SPS/TBT national subcommittees among the Central
Department for WTO Affairs, the Egyptian TBT/SPS enquiry points and the different stakeholders to
ensure addressing the Egyptian and other WTO members’ TBT/SPS in an appropriate, systemic, and
transparent manner. This mechanism has in fact enhanced the procedures to notify all Egyptian
TBT/SPS related new measures as well as draft and modified ones. In SPS, Egypt has submitted 94
notifications (including addenda, corrigenda and revisions) since 2005 until the end of 2015 (available
on the WTO website). In TBT, Egypt has made 146 notifications (including addenda, corrigenda and
revisions) since 1998 until the end of 2015.
As far as mandatory standards are concerned, domestic products and imports must both be inspected
for conformity with Egyptian mandatory standards according to Ministerial Decree 179/1996. In this
regard, there is no discrimination between locally produced and imported goods. With the
harmonization of Egyptian standards with international standards, the remaining mandatory standards
are mostly related to health and safety, and are less likely to be trade restrictive. However, local
producers arguably face discrimination when it comes to inspection against voluntary standards.
According to Ministerial Decree 180/1996, domestic products are to be inspected against the Egyptian
standard or an international standard of choice. For imports not included in the mandatory list,
inspection against Egyptian or international voluntary standards occurs only if a commodity is listed in
Annex 8 to Ministerial Decree 275/1991. Imports not listed in this Annex face no inspection when
entering Egypt, an option that is not available to local products. This discrimination implies that
domestic goods (including those with an export potential) are often subject to more inspections and
compliance requirements, which may have a negative impact on exports.