Egypt’s Steel Duties Leave Appliance Buyers Paying Twice

Egyptian rolling mills asked Cairo on October 2, 2026, to reopen steel import duties that appliance makers already lost in April. Investment Minister Mohamed Farid had locked safeguard tariffs on steel sheets for three years, after fridge and washer prices had already climbed about 200 percent since the pound was floated.

The Egyptian Tax Experts Society pleaded on March 13 for a pause in those sheet duties. Twenty days later the wall went up anyway. Integrated mills kept the barrier. Downstream plants and households kept the bill.

The March Plea Landed 20 Days Too Late

Ashraf Abdel-Ghani, secretary of the Senate Economic Committee and founder of the society, said Ramadan used to bring discounts on electrical goods. In 2026 the big producers filled only 20 percent of trader orders and waited to move prices.

He said local sheet output was about 900,000 tons a year, while domestic demand was close to double that, and that tax and customs charges on local appliance makers already ran above 20 percent. The ministry of industry, he added, had a plan to put industrial land and cheap loans behind new sheet lines. Until those lines existed, he wanted the temporary sheet duties reviewed.

The market can no longer absorb further price increases.

Ashraf Abdel-Ghani, secretary of the Senate Economic Committee, March 13 statement

He put four fixes on the table, none of them a price freeze.

FOUR FIXES THE TAX EXPERTS ASKED FOR

• More local sheet: Allocate industrial land at competitive prices and finance new mills so output can catch demand near 1.8 million tons.
• A duty pause: Review Investment Minister Decision 399 of 2025, which he said had already lifted factory costs by 5 to 7 percent.
• Workshop credit: Give small shops tax and loan help so they can feed parts into the big appliance plants.
• A lighter tax load: Ease value-added tax, the resource-development tax, and customs on imported parts that together exceeded 20 percent.

The plea came late in the legal clock. Egypt had already told the World Trade Organization on March 2 that cheap coil was injuring local sheet mills, and the 200-day temporary duties imposed on September 14, 2025, were due to lapse in early April.

What Cairo Charged on Steel Sheets Through 2028

Minister Hassan El-Khatib opened the file in September 2025 after local mills complained of a flood of coil. The WTO notice of the sheet-steel probe covered cold-rolled, galvanized, and pre-painted sheet, with a parallel case on billet. Temporary rates ran 200 days: 13.6 percent on hot-rolled coil, 11.11 percent on cold-rolled, 12.16 percent on galvanized, 4.94 percent on pre-painted sheet, and 16.2 percent on billet, each with a pound floor per ton.

Farid made the duties final from April 2, 2026, under Law No. 161 of 1998. The ministry said billet imports jumped 1,213 percent between 2021 and 2024, hot-rolled flats 116 percent, and cold-rolled, galvanized, and colored flats 86 percent. Rates fall a little each year and run through September 13, 2028. Year two began on September 14, 2026.

THE THREE-YEAR SHEET DUTY

Billet, the semi-finished bar that independent rolling mills buy, was set at 13.12 percent with a $70 floor in year one. Trade desks later put the year-two billet rate at 12 percent with a $64 floor. Farid said producers and importers must file monthly data, and that the ministry would review the impact every three months.

THE PATH TO THE THREE-YEAR WALL

1. September 14, 2025: Temporary safeguard duties take effect for 200 days on flat steel and billet.
2. March 2, 2026: Egypt notifies the WTO of a finding of serious injury on cold-rolled, galvanized, and pre-painted sheet.
3. March 13, 2026: Abdel-Ghani asks for a review of Decision 399 before the temporary window closes.
4. April 2, 2026: Ministerial Decision 120 locks declining duties for three years.
5. September 14, 2026: Year-two rates take over.
6. September 25, 2026: Customs issues Circular 55 after a Beko Egypt complaint on coated sheets.
7. October 2, 2026: Rolling-mill owners ask for a fresh review of the billet duty.

Downstream plants had lobbied against a final order. The ministry held hearings with industry and coordinated with the ministries of industry and supply, then kept the wall up.

Mills Keep the Barrier While Factories Eat the Cost

The winner sits at the top of the melt. Ezz Steel’s 7 million tonnes of rolling capacity includes about 2.3 million tonnes of hot-rolled coil, the product that feeds many of the sheets appliance plants buy. Suez Steel and Beshay Steel each have about 2.2 million tonnes of capacity behind it. Those groups asked for protection from a global glut, and they got a three-year schedule.

Ahmed Ezz, the company’s chief executive, had already told an audience at the World Economic Forum that Chinese state support and foreign tariffs were squeezing exports, and that housing and infrastructure at home had to carry more of the load. In 2025 the group approved a $1.16 billion programme to expand rolling mills. A protected home coil market is the floor under that bet.

The losers are the plants that buy the coil. Hassan Mabrouk, who heads the electrical appliances division at the Federation of Egyptian Industries, said in February that a sheet import charge already above 10 percent was lifting his members’ costs while they still had to import part of their needs. Ashraf Helal, who leads the same trade at the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, said on April 1 that appliance tags had risen as much as 10 percent after the dollar in banks moved from 47 pounds to 55 and after fuel costs rose, with sales already down more than 50 percent.

Mabrouk later said production costs jumped 15 to 20 percent after the regional war that began in late February, and that factories had passed through less than 15 percent so they would not freeze the floor entirely. He warned of another 10 to 15 percent if the dollar and metals kept climbing. Traders who had been promised Ramadan deals instead got partial shipments and a line that the price would be set on delivery.

Sheet Steel Is 30 to 45 Percent of the Parts Bill

The duty is not the whole 200 percent. Abdel-Ghani tied that 200 percent jump in appliance prices to the float and to broken supply lines. His own cost figure for the sheet tariff was 5 to 7 percent. That is a second hit, not the first one, and it lands on a part that dominates the bill of materials.

COST PRESSURE ON THE FACTORY FLOOR

• Sheet share: Mabrouk said steel sheet is 30 to 45 percent of direct raw-material cost in home appliances.
• Copper share: Fridges, air conditioners, and gas heaters carry 10 to 20 percent copper, which had already jumped in early 2026.
• The extra duty: Abdel-Ghani put the sheet tariff’s add-on at 5 to 7 percent of factory cost while Decision 399 was still temporary.
• What stores saw: Helal’s April 1 print was a 10 percent rise on the ticket, on top of the multi-year 200 percent move since the float.

By August, the Central Bank said urban inflation slowed to 14.5 percent from 14.9 percent in July, while core inflation was 14.9 percent. Nationwide figures from the statistics agency showed furnishings and household equipment up 14.8 percent on the year, and the narrower household-appliances line up 6.3 percent, with a 0.3 percent rise in August alone. Food was cooling. The goods that sit in a kitchen were not.

A parallel bill showed up in phones assembled in Egypt. Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Realme lifted some local models as much as 63.6 percent in the cheap tier and 78.1 percent in the mid-range from the start of 2026 into early September, with the dollar above 52 pounds in late September. Different products, same FX math.

Why Beko Egypt Is Still Fighting for Exemptions

Beko Egypt, the local arm of the appliance maker, went to Customs in September because the final sheet duties were landing on coils it says it cannot buy at home. Ahmed Amowy, head of the Customs Authority, issued Tariff Circular 55 of 2026 on the back of that complaint. Yomna Elshabrawy, who runs the Trade Remedies Sector at the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade, said sheets coated with PET or VCM on one or both faces stay outside Decision 120 if Customs can see the coating.

The decree already carved out grades the local industry does not make. The fight is over whether a given coil is really one of those grades when it hits the port.

SHEETS THAT ESCAPE THE DUTY

• Antibacterial coat: Galvanized sheet with an anti-bacteria protective layer.
• Plastic laminate: Galvanized sheet coated with PET or VCM, the grade Beko asked Customs to recognise.
• Thick plastisol: A Plastisol layer of 200 microns or more.
• Special coats and sizes: Silicon-aluminum and zinc-aluminum-magnesium alloys under set recipes, full-hard unannealed cold-rolled coil, odd dimensions, and zinc coats of 450 or 600 grams per square meter.

Those carve-outs are narrow. Ordinary cold-rolled and galvanized sheet, the metal in a standard fridge wrapper, still pays. A three-month review was promised in April. The Beko filing in September is what a review looks like in practice: a factory arguing coil by coil, not a rewind of the three-year clock.

The Same Review, This Time From Rolling Mills

The split inside steel is now as sharp as the split between steel and appliances. Independent rerollers, about a fifth of the domestic bar market, buy billet. After the duty, Ashraf El Garhy, vice chairman of El Garhy Steel, said his plant’s monthly output fell from about 70,000 tons to 15,000 tons because Ezz Steel and Suez Steel together sent no more than 35,000 tons of billet from April, an 80 percent drop against his usual need, and because imported billet was landing near 33,000 pounds a ton after the extra charge.

Gamal El-Garhy, chairman of the same group, asked on October 2 for an independent committee from the ministries of investment and industry and the cabinet to visit the mills. He said rebar had moved from about 34,000 pounds a ton when the duty came in to about 41,000 pounds including 14 percent value-added tax. Ezz Steel raised its own factory-gate rebar by about 1,000 pounds from October 1, to 40,850 pounds a ton, roughly $781, including that tax.

Integrated producers can melt and roll behind the tariff. Rerollers cannot. Appliance plants cannot. The year-two sheet rates that took effect on September 14 shave a fraction off year one and leave the wall in place until September 13, 2028. Abdel-Ghani asked for a pause while local sheet caught up. Cairo wrote a calendar instead, and the people who buy the coil are still the ones asking for the next review.