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The impact of law no. 96 of 1992
LCHR held a conference on March 27th 2003 in order to discuss the impacts of the implementation of law no. 96 of 1992 concerning re-regulation of the relation between the landlord and the tenant impacted negatively lives of hundreds of small-scale farmers in the Egyptian countryside. The rented land represented the main income of about 904.000 farmers, who are responsible of 5.3 million people. Those tenants lost about LE2.83.200.000 with the virtue of law implementation. This amount is the difference between the rental value before and after the law implementation that the rental of one feddan was LE600 in 1997 then it reached LE2000 after the implementation of the law. It pushed many tenants to abandon their rented possession because of the high rental. This increase of the rental value doesn’t stop, on the contrary, it increases yearly that decreases the farmers’ incomes.
It isn’t the only effect of the law implementation that it has many impacts as decreasing the credit resources representing in the refusing of Developing and Agricultural Credit Bank to provide tenants with loans. Before the law, the governmental agricultural institutions used to give tenants loans and pesticides, fertilizers and seeds with low prices but after the law it refused to deal with the tenants despite their new rent contracts. Consequently, the tenants are obliged to buy the cultivation staff from the free-market with high prices.
The law implementation revealed the catastrophe of the Developing and Agricultural Credit Bank (DACB), which provided tenants with loans without revealing the necessity to paying them off before land delivery. Therefore, the bank filed lawsuits against tenants charging them with squandering the bank money especially that the tenants used to sign blank checks that was filled in by the bank employees using illusive numbers that pushed most of the tenants to leave their land searching for alternative work.
Moreover, the tenants didn’t receive any compensation that right was given to the landlords only. Those tenants cultivated their plots while it used to give weak production but with their hard work, they transferred it to be the best arable land. Then it was law no. 96 of 1992 tat provided the landowner with the right to cleave the rent contract with giving the tenant compensation (forty times as the taxes of each year).
On the other hand, the law stipulated delivering the tenants alternative lands but in fact it was another trick organized by the government, which didn’t possess reclaimed lands that satisfied the whole tenants. There were other negative impacts of the implementation of the law from which the tenants, their families suffered as decreasing their incomes, not educating their kids and non-existence of the agricultural cycle.