On January 24, Egypt took a major stride towards revitalizing the country’s long dormant gold mining industry. In a memorandum of understanding signed by Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy on behalf of the Egyptian government and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private arm of the World Bank Group (WBG), Cairo committed itself to radically overhaul legislation governing gold mining. The existing legislation had made it almost impossible for foreign interests to play a part in the mining industry, limiting gold mining activities for holdings. The laws as they presently stand require profit sharing by those involved, and were tailored more to limited private operations rather than large-scale excavation, in the modern sense. Egypt is considered to have major untapped reserves of gold but lacks the expertise to extract the ore. Moreover, modern mining techniques require massive investment, something local miners are not in a position to provide. This is expected
