Vehicle registration plates of Egypt

A light blue private vehicle's plate. (Cairo)

Egyptian vehicle registration number plates are license plates used for official identification purposes for motor vehicles in Egypt.

Appearance

A red truck's plate. (Giza)

The new vehicle registration plates, which have been used since August 2008, are rectangular in shape and made of aluminum. The top part has the word "Egypt" in English and Arabic in black font on backgrounds of different colors depending on the type of license the vehicle is given. Motorbikes have similar but much smaller plates with light blue (private motorbikes) and dark blue (police motorbikes) the only colors available.

The vehicle registration number consists of two parts:

Plate code Governorate Vehicle Registration
000-xxx Cairo Governorate
0000-xx Giza Governorate
0000-xxس Alexandria Governorate
0000-xxق Qalyubia Governorate
0000-xxر Sharqia Governorate
0000-xxم Monufia Governorate
0000-xxب Beheira Governorate
0000-xxد Dakahlia Governorate
0000-xxع Gharbia Governorate
0000-xxل Kafr El Sheikh Governorate
0000-xxف Faiyum Governorate
0000-xxو Beni Suef Governorate
0000-xxن Minya Governorate
0000-xxى Asyut Governorate
0000-xxهـ Sohag Governorate
0000-x ص أ Qena Governorate
0000-x ص ق Luxor Governorate
0000-x ص و Aswan Governorate
0000-x ط د Damietta Governorate
0000-x ط ع Port Said Governorate
0000-x ط ص Ismailia Governorate
0000-x ط س Suez Governorate
0000-x ط ر Red Sea Governorate
0000-x ط أ North Sinai Governorate
0000-x ط ج South Sinai Governorate
0000-x ج هـ Matrouh Governorate
0000-x ج ب New Valley Governorate

Numbers go from 1 to 9 and are chosen randomly. x is a random letter.

Note : These plate codes do not apply for army, police and diplomatic vehicles.

Use of Latin letters and Western Arabic numerals was abadoned early due to the unease of reading the arabic letters and numbers because they were too small.

To reduce the risk of confusion on account of the visual similarity between Arabic letters, only a limited number of letters are used. They and the Latin letters the Egyptian government uses to correspond to them are:

A gray bus plate.
A beige tourist bus plate without Latin letters
Arabic letter Latin letter
أ A
ب B
ج G
د D
ر R
س S
ص C
ط T
ع E
ف F
ق K
ل L
م M
ن N
هـ H
و W
ی Y

Size

Standard license plates are of 17x35 cm.

Design and format

Customs plate from Sinai (2004).

The top rectangle in the license plate is color-coded according to the type of vehicle being licensed.

Older versions

Before the introduction of the new alphanumeric plate system in August 2008, Egyptian vehicle registration numbers were purely numeric, and registered by governorate and registration type. Privately owned vehicles were generally given white plates with black lettering; other vehicles' plates were color-coded, with the entire plate being in the applicable color, as follows:

Private vehicle, Cairo, early 2000s Private vehicle, Cairo, 1990s Private vehicle, Cairo, 1980s Private vehicle, Cairo, 1970s

Some of these older plates are still in use, but it is the government's intention to replace all the plates with the new color-coded plates within 1 to 2 years.

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.