Egypt’s government has ordered shops, restaurants and cafes to shut earlier to conserve oil-powered electricity during the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, a shift that officials say is needed as energy prices surge worldwide and oil costs strain the country’s finances. Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly said the steps are designed to curb oil consumption and warned that without the measures Egypt would face “further price increases.”
The policy, which took effect Saturday, requires businesses across the country to close at 9 p.m. for a month, disrupting the late-night routines that many residents associate with Cairo and other major cities. In Cairo, a nighttime tour over the weekend found streets that are usually active after dark turning “eeryily quiet,” according to the Associated Press description of the city’s atmosphere.
For small businesses, the government’s timing rules translated quickly into staffing and revenue pressures. Youssef Salah, a cafe owner in Cairo’s Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, said the order was “ruinous” because it “deprives us from our peak time,” and said he was forced to cut his 35-member workforce by 40%. He said he used to keep the cafe open around the clock, with peak hours starting in the evening and running into the early hours of the next day, but that the late-night shifts were abolished under the new schedule.
Some Egyptians responded with public criticism as well as online pushback. Mahmoud Elmamlouk, editor of Cairo24, posted on social media after the first evening of closures, writing about what he called the “Butterfly effect” of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which he said had deprived people in a neighborhood of access to late-night gatherings such as smoking shisha. Others called for an adjustment to at least extend hours later into the night.
Ayman Harbi, who works at a store in Downtown Cairo, said closing at 9 p.m. was “extremely difficult” for businesses like his, adding that summer work often starts after 8 p.m. and that being forced to close at 9 p.m. “makes the workday pointless.” Magdy al-Deeb, a business owner, urged the government to reverse the decision to preserve jobs, especially for cafes and small businesses, and said the policy raised a question about where workers would go if they lose their jobs.
The broader package of energy-saving steps extends beyond retail hours. The government described the measures as “exceptional,” and said they include dimming streetlights and roadside advertising. It also ordered government district offices in the New Administrative Capital, east of Cairo, to close by 6 p.m., and asked civil servants to return working from home for one day a week in April.
Egyptian officials said the government also exempted tourist-attraction areas from the energy-saving requirements because tourism is a major source of foreign currency. Those exempt areas included Red Sea resorts of Hurghada, Sharm el-Sheikh and Marsa Alam, along with antiquities-rich southern cities of Aswan and Luxor.
The energy measures are tied to disruptions that followed the start of the war on Feb. 28, when the Associated Press report said the U.S. and Israel launched massive airstrikes on Iran and Iran responded by targeting oil and gas infrastructure in the Persian Gulf and by squeezing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The report said global energy prices have skyrocketed since then and that the increases hit Egypt especially hard because the country has a population of over 108 million and consumes $20 billion of oil products annually, including fuel used to run power plants. It added that Egypt imports 28% of its gasoline and 45% of its diesel, and that Madbouly said the nation’s oil bill had more than doubled from January to $2.5 billion.