Egypt’s gold and silver investment funds passed 329,000 clients in June, up 14% from March, with combined net assets reaching EGP 9.35 billion (about $184 million at this week’s exchange rate), the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) said in its latest quarterly report. The regulator called it proof of a maturing market.
Look past the combined total, though, and the report tells a second story. Strip out the two month old silver funds, and gold fund sign ups grew at roughly a ninth of the previous quarter’s pace, while the gold funds’ own net assets actually slipped between March and June.
Azzam Calls the Growth a Sign of Confidence
The FRA’s report covers data through 25 June 2026 and is the regulator’s latest snapshot of a product category that barely existed three years ago. Islam Azzam, the FRA’s chairperson, said the results reflect growing investor confidence and the continued development of Egypt’s precious metals fund market. He added that the sector is playing a bigger role in giving Egyptians diversified investment tools as the authority works to deepen the country’s non-banking financial markets.
Azzam has made similar points before about the broader sector he oversees. In an earlier statistical release, the FRA noted that financing across FRA-regulated entities topped EGP 1.4 trillion by the end of last year, a scale that puts the gold and silver niche in context. Fund units themselves trade on the Egyptian Exchange, which posts a daily price indicator for each licensed gold fund.
Physical Gold Got Too Expensive to Just Buy
Gold funds did not emerge in a vacuum. Egyptians have historically parked savings in physical gold, real estate, or bank certificates of deposit. All three got less attractive at once.
Making charges on physical gold, known locally as masna’ya, now average EGP 350 to 400 per gram for domestic jewelry and EGP 800 to 1,000 per gram for imported pieces, according to local trade reporting, with those workmanship charges set to rise further. A traditional 21 karat Gold Pound coin, long a household savings staple, has been trading in the tens of thousands of pounds. Bank certificates of deposit paying around 17% no longer look as attractive with inflation still running in the mid teens, capital markets expert Hanan Ramsis told Ahram Online.
Gold funds solved the entry price problem, and their early returns did the rest of the selling. Precious metals funds delivered an average quarterly return of 20.37% in the first quarter of 2026, the best of any fund category tracked by the FRA.
These returns have significantly enhanced the attractiveness of gold funds, particularly among younger investors seeking flexible, secure, and accessible investment opportunities.
Saied Embaby, chief executive of iSagha, an online gold and jewellery trading platform, said that quarter’s performance explains much of the rush toward digital gold products. Egypt’s currency has also been a live factor for savers weighing hedges; some banks have argued the pound’s fair value sits closer to EGP 43 than its current trading level, a gap that shapes how much households trust the currency versus a gold-backed certificate.
Gold Still Dwarfs Egypt’s Two-Month-Old Silver Funds
The second quarter’s headline addition was Egypt’s first silver investment funds, launched only months ago. They remain a rounding error next to gold.
| Metric | Gold Funds | Silver Funds |
|---|---|---|
| Number of funds | 7 | 2 |
| Investors (end of June 2026) | 306,500 | 22,300 |
| Net assets | EGP 9.2 billion | EGP 146.1 million |
| First launched | May 2023 | Second quarter of 2026 |
Each certificate represents a claim on physical metal held by a licensed custodian rather than the metal itself. In the case of the market’s oldest fund, redeeming an actual bar carries a 5.5% fee and requires a holding worth at least 50 grams of gold. That structure is exactly why the funds exist: convenience and liquidity, not a substitute for owning metal outright.
Who Is Actually Buying These Funds?
Gold and silver fund investors in Egypt skew heavily young, male, and urban, a pattern that has held steady since the category launched.
- Retail investors: 71% of the client base, with institutions holding the remaining 29%.
- Gender split: men account for 83% of individual investors, women just 17%.
- Age: 39.4% of investors are between 20 and 30, another 32% are between 30 and 40, so more than seven in ten are under 40.
- Geography: Greater Cairo holds the largest concentration of accounts of any region in the country.
Azzam has pointed to that age skew repeatedly, framing it as evidence that younger Egyptians favor newer, tech enabled products over their parents’ habit of storing jewelry in a drawer. The gender gap gets less attention in the FRA’s own commentary, even though it is nearly as wide as the age gap.
From One Fund in 2023 to Nine Today
Egypt’s gold fund market is barely three years old, and its build out has been steady rather than sudden.
- May 2023: Azimut Egypt launches the AZ-Gold Fund, the country’s first gold investment vehicle, backed by 24 karat bullion stored with an FRA-licensed custodian.
- Early 2024: Beltone Asset Management introduces Sabayek in partnership with Evolve Holding, widening retail access to gold-linked certificates.
- July 2024: Mubasher Capital Holding launches the Mubasher Gold Fund, blending physical gold with government debt instruments.
- Late 2025: CI Capital Asset Management launches the Sharia-compliant Gold Misr Fund, drawing strong initial subscriptions.
- January 2026: EFG Hermes introduces an open-ended gold fund with no redemption fees, targeting both retail and institutional buyers.
- Second quarter of 2026: Egypt’s first two silver investment funds launch, pulling in 22,300 investors within months.
The regulatory groundwork predates all of it. As recently as May 2025, the FRA was still clarifying basic rules, warning the public after reporting that 200,000 citizens had invested EGP 2.1 billion that its oversight covers fund units, not direct gold trading, and cautioning against traders misusing its name. That confusion sat alongside a rougher, informal side of Egypt’s gold economy; authorities have separately carried out a crackdown on illegal Sudan-border gold mining, part of a broader push to pull unregulated gold activity into formal channels.
The Gold Funds’ Own Numbers Tell a Slower Story
Here is what the FRA’s own figures show when the two products are separated. Gold-only accounts rose from 289,000 in March to 306,500 in June, a gain of about 6%. In the first quarter, that same gold-only investor base had grown 51.3% quarter on quarter, according to a factsheet by Arab Finance. The pace didn’t just slow. It fell to roughly a ninth of where it was.
Assets tell a sharper version of the same story. Gold funds alone held EGP 9.28 billion in March and EGP 9.2 billion in June, a decline even as new accounts kept opening. Divide assets by investors and the average gold-fund holding fell from roughly EGP 32,100 to about EGP 30,000 per account in three months. Nearly all of the EGP 70 million the combined category gained this quarter came from the brand-new silver funds, not from any actual growth in gold.
Scale still matters here too. Egypt’s broader investment fund industry held roughly EGP 411 billion in net assets in the first quarter, and precious metals funds made up just 2.5% of that total NAV even after nearly doubling in a single quarter. Money market funds, not gold, still run the show.
Gold’s own price moves explain much of the gold fund slowdown. After climbing through January, prices cooled by late March and touched an intra-year low near $4,170 an ounce during the second quarter, according to J.P. Morgan Global Research, before J.P. Morgan forecast gold pushing toward $6,000 an ounce by year end. Whether that rebound happens depends on Federal Reserve policy and central bank buying, neither of which the FRA controls.
Gold funds added thousands of new accounts and lost value at the same time, a trade Egypt’s newest investors did not choose but are already living with.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are Egypt’s Gold and Silver Investment Funds?
They are FRA-regulated funds whose certificates represent a claim on physical gold or silver bullion held by a licensed custodian rather than direct ownership of the metal. Units trade on the Egyptian Exchange like stocks, and the fund’s value moves with the daily local metal price, letting investors buy in with far less cash than a physical bar or coin requires.
How Many Gold and Silver Funds Operate in Egypt?
Nine funds were active as of June 2026: seven gold funds, including AZ-Gold, Sabayek, the Dahab Fund, Mubasher Gold Fund, Gold Misr Fund and the EFG Hermes Gold Fund, plus the two silver funds that launched in the second quarter of 2026.
Are Gold Fund Certificates Taxed in Egypt?
Gold and silver themselves remain fully exempt from value-added tax, according to iSagha’s chief executive, who has pushed back on rumors of new levies. Egypt’s existing tax applies only to manufacturing and production-related service charges, not to the underlying value of the metal held inside a fund.
Can I Redeem Fund Units for Physical Gold?
Some funds allow it, but not casually. Redeeming physical metal typically requires a holding equivalent to at least 50 grams of gold and carries a redemption fee of up to 5.5%, a structure designed to cover storage, insurance and handling rather than encourage frequent physical withdrawals.
Why Are Silver Funds So Much Smaller Than Gold Funds?
Mainly timing. Silver funds only launched in the second quarter of 2026, giving them a fraction of the three-year head start gold funds have had since May 2023. Their EGP 146.1 million in assets and 22,300 investors already outpace where gold funds stood in their first months on the market.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Gold and silver fund values fluctuate with commodity prices and currency movements, and past returns do not guarantee future performance. Readers should consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions. Figures are accurate as of publication based on Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority data.
