Concession is a legal institution whereby some asset is leased at a nominal price or for free for a long time by its owner to someone else.
Reasoning: Egypt has skills and ideal tension on reclaiming public spaces. In some countries, like Montenegro or Italy, public institutions own a lot of real estate, that they do not really have the resource to maintain. So what they do is the following: suppose they figure out that, in a certain neighborhood, there is a lack of services to take care of kids. They will identify a building they own (but not use) in the area, and make a public call saying: if you make us a convincing project that addresses this problem, and take responsibility for resourcing it, we will give you our building free of charge for 30 years. The owning institution does not lose the building (so it’s not privatization): but the perspective of being able to use a building for many years incentivizes the people with the project to invest in it, renovate it etc. The legal institute whereby I don’t lose my asset, but grant you the right to use it subject to certain conditions is called a concession.
I was in a meeting (not in Egypt) where somebody claimed the Egyptian legal system does not have concession. Is this true? Can you guys check? Any lawyer will know – even a good English-Arabic dictionary might know. Thanks!
I am not sure wether this qualifies, but the Islamic system of waqf bears some similiarity. It is not quite a concession, but the endowment of a building of a plot - for religious purposes - to individuals to handle on behalf of the religious institution, or state.
Thanks @Hegazy. When you work on tasks, like this, you can (and should) modify their status with each comment. In this one, I am updating its status from “open” to “in progress”, and assigning it to you. This is useful because you can easily keep track of all the open tasks on Edgeryders and those assigned to you. Just click on “Tasks” in the main menu, then you will have a “My tasks” tab.
When you come back with an answer, write it in a comment and change the status to “done”.
Concession do exist in Egypt, mainly as an incentive for investors, especially in the oil and hospitality industries. This gold mine is an example of a publicly contested concession given to a foreign firm. Its totally up to the government’s discretion whether to grant it or not.
I am not clear on weather private persons/organisations can grant them or not, or weather they are even properly legally binding!
In arabic it is called حقوق امتياز.
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I think the story of Nebny is particularly valuable to mention here. Its headquarters was actually the office of Cairo’s governor in Manshiyat Nasser and in 2012 the then governor of Cairo issued an order to host Nebny in these headquarters. A regime-change later, the new governor ordered their eviction from it, which took place last December. I highly recommend reading this story!