The newest Egypt Service Centre opened on 30 October in Muqattam in southeast Cairo.
It is the first fixed service centre in Greater Cairo and the fourth across Egypt; the first three being in Alexandria, South Sinai, and Aswan.
Egypt Service Centres provide a large number and variety of much-needed government services to the public; they are designed to accommodate all segments of the population including persons with disabilities.
At hand to witness the setting-off of the new centre were Rania Al-Mashaat, Minister of Planning, Economic Development and International Cooperation; Manal Awad, Minister of Local Development; Adnan Fangari, Minister of Justice; Saber Ibrahim, Governor of Cairo; and Ibrahim Sarhan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of E-Finance Group for Financial and Digital Investments, the operational arm of the “Egypt Services” project.
According to Dr Mashaat, Egypt Services Centres aim to implement digital transformation in its comprehensive sense to make things easier for users and to achieve financial inclusion through enhancing electronic payment methods, and adapting digital transformation tools to reduce the time required to provide government services.
Egypt Services project, the Minister of Planning said, provides more than 150 government services, including documentation and real estate registration services, issuing computerised certificates, renewing national ID cards, individual and family registration, in addition to issuing criminal records in Arabic and in English, traffic services, civil status and passports, public prosecution services, commercial registry services, social insurance and social solidarity. She pointed out that electronic payment services have been added, which achieves financial inclusion through paying and collecting tuition fees, paying electricity bills, charging electricity cards, and paying university fees. Egypt Services Centres are scheduled to open before year end in Gharbiya, Giza and North Sinai.
During the inauguration of the Muqattam branch, the Minister of Planning, was keen to highlight and praise the role played by the late Ashraf Abdel Hafeez, former Minister’s Advisor for Digital Transformation, who played “a prominent role and had an insightful vision in the idea of establishing this centre”. During the opening of the centre, his family was honoured in appreciation of his ideas and dedication.
Minister of Local Development, Dr Awad said that the Egypt Services project contributes to ensuring the sustainability of providing government services to citizens, facilitating and reducing the time to obtain the service, thus reducing congestion in government offices, and benefiting from Egypt’s development in digital transformation.
Along the same line, Dr Awad praised the efforts of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development in supporting the Ministry of Local Development and local governments to improve procedures for accessing government services and governance and simplifying these procedures. This, she said, helps create a business climate attractive to local and foreign investors.
For his part, Ibrahim Sarhan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of E-Finance, expressed his company’s keenness to join hands with the government in spreading and launching more Services Centres across Egypt, pointing out that the target is to reach more than 200 government services through 14 centres.
E-Finance is affiliated to the E-Finance Group for Financial and Digital Investments, the government’s arm for digital transformation in Egypt. It provides the digital infrastructure supporting the operation and management of fixed and mobile Egypt Services technology centres. It also supplies them with electronic financial payments technology based on the integrated digital infrastructure of E-Finance companies.
Since its launch, the Egypt Services Centre project has achieved a qualitative leap in facilitating the services provided to the public and improving their quality. In 2024, the project achieved more than 400,000 transactions, and the average service delivery time was 7 minutes. Answers to any inquiries are available through the “Egypt Services” website and a hotline 16973 for customer service, which operates throughout the week to provide information and answer inquiries about the services provided.
