Egypt authorities wants old taxis off the road

August 20, 2008 · Filed Under Egypt tourism, Modern Egypt

Thanks to Andie Byrnes for this news lead.

Under a law passed earlier this year, the authorities will not renew the licences of any taxis older than 20 years, which may be the majority on the clogged, polluted streets of Cairo. The drive to get rid of old taxis reflects a broader trend towards modernizing consumer products in the most populous Arab country, where megamalls financed by Gulf Arab petrodollars are opening for the first time.

With economic growth at 7 percent a year, retailers, property developers, car makers and banks are posting record profits as Egyptians spend more, buying new products they once couldn’t afford.

The Egyptian government, which has overhauled its economy along free-market principles since 2004, says the taxis, besides causing crashes, break down so often they clog up roads, which is bad for business. They also emit black clouds of smoke as they putter through the city, contributing to a layer of summer smog that settles over Cairo’s skyline of minarets and apartment towers topped with satellite dishes.

But persauding the owners of Cairo’s antiquities on wheels to turn over the keys may be a tricky matter in Egypt, where discontent is rising due to soaring food costs. Thousands of government workers hit the streets at night to supplement meager salaries by driving a cab in a country where about a fifth of the population lives on less than $1 a day.

The number of taxi drivers ballooned in the 1990s, when government decrees allowed any car to be converted into a taxi and permitted banks to give car loans, according to Khaled el-Khamissi, author of “Taxi”, a 2006 book about Cairo cabbies. Many of Egypt’s unemployed took out a loan to buy a cab, swelling the number of taxis to about 80,000, Khamissi wrote.

Reuters