The Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El-Molla, said that the use of prepaid natural gas metres will start for the first time before the end of 2019. They will be used in the social housing units in Bashayer El Kheir 1 and 2 in Alexandria and Al-Asmarat in Cairo with a total of 20,000 customers as a means to ensure the efficiency of the system. He added that it is expected in the light of the results of the trial operation to generalise the experiment in social housing projects and new cities as well as residential compounds to install counters for 300,000 customers in the fiscal year (FY) 2020/21 and then 500,000 new customers in FY 2021/22. The past period has seen several preliminary steps to start this project in cooperation with the ministry of military production, including preparing technical specifications for the manufacture of metres and signing a protocol of cooperation with the ministry of military production for the manufacture and supply of the metres. He added that the period extending from July 2018 to the beginning of June witnessed a remarkable delivery rate of about 1.17m housing units, rising to 1.2m housing units by the end of this month to achieve a delivery rate exceeding the target plan estimated at 1.2m housing units. Furthermore, El-Molla pointed out the importance of expanding the delivery of natural gas to homes and commercial establishments to achieve surplus of domestic gas consumption. The expansion of the gas delivery contributed to decreasing the consumption of the gas by more than 7% during the current FY 2018/19, compared to the previous FY 2017/18. The minister of petroleum explained that the plan to deliver natural gas to residential units during the next FY is targeting a number of cities and regions, including the cities of Mallawi in Minya; Abutig, Sedfa, and Al-Qusiyya in Assiut; Dirb Najm, Kafr Saqr, and Qanayat in Sharqeya; Fatih, Hawamidiyah, and Badrashin in Giza; Shebin El Qanater in Qaliubiya and Ashmoun in Menoufia, and Daqahleya. They will see the application of the initiative of the ministry of petroleum for facilitated instalments of the cost of delivery without an advance or interests.
