Daylight savings time will be applied in Egypt from 5 July and will last until parliament issues a law to end it, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Magdi Al-Agati announced on Wednesday.
According to parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Al, the House of Representatives has not yet set a final date for the end of daylight savings time, as it is awaiting the state council's final opinion on the matter.
Abdel-Al also solicited government recommendations on daylight savings time before the House of Representatives started its final round of voting on its end date.
In a Wednesday parliamentary session, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Magdy Al-Agati revealed that the Egyptian government paid USD 8 million to the International Air Transport Association after the state did not apply daylight savings time in April.
In late April, the Egyptian government announced that the daylight savings time would return to Egypt starting 7 July and would last until the end of October.
First implemented in the country in 1988, the system was introduced as a power-saving measure prolonging daylight hours.
It was abolished in April 2011 after the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, with the government arguing at the time that the practice was ineffective at curbing power usage.
The system was temporarily revived in May 2014 in order to ease consumption after the country saw rolling power blackouts.
Egypt is normally two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) — meaning it was three hours ahead when daylight savings time was applied.
