Awqaf Minister Osama Al-Azhari announced on Wednesday 4 November 2026 the formation of a committee to review the rental value of Awqaf land, including representatives of the Egyptian Awqaf Authority, the General Authority for Agrarian Reform, the Supreme Committee for Recovering State Land and a number of MPs, to finish its work within three weeks at most. He made the announcement at a meeting of the House of Representatives’ Religious Affairs and Awqaf Committee chaired by Amr El-Wardani, attended by Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Hany Azer.
The minister said the new rent would be announced after the committee finishes its work and would not be collected for three months from now, and that the ministry would form a reconciliation committee to settle the status of tenants in arrears. The meeting discussed two briefing requests: the first from MP Emad El-Ghoneimy on renewal lawsuits the authority filed against tenants and fertilizer not being distributed, and the second from MP Mahmoud Naguib Meshaal on the sudden rise in the rent of Awqaf land in the village of Meet El-Sheyoukh in Faraskur, Damietta Governorate. The committee postponed discussing them until the minister’s committee finishes its work.
Head of the Farmers’ Syndicate Hussein Abu Saddam had said that the rent per feddan rose in some areas from 19,000 pounds ($347) to 54,000 pounds ($986), and proposed that rent not exceed 25,000 pounds ($456) per feddan. In an earlier meeting last July, the Religious Affairs Committee recommended following the agrarian reform experience, and that rental values rise only as determined by an expert accredited by the Agriculture Ministry.
Photo: Tarekheikal via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
