The least spectacular but most important part of Nasser’s land reform, which
was also of long-lasting effect, was the introduction of laws strengthening the
rights of tenants vis-à-vis landlords. Up to that time absenteeism had generally
prevailed in Egypt’s rural areas. Only once a year, after the cotton harvest, did
the lessors, who normally lived in town, visit their lessees to collect the land
rent. According to Nasser’s laws, rack-rents were forbidden and the landlords’
gains were not to exceed seven times the amount of the tax they themselves
had to pay. Moreover, the new leasehold conditions generally were more in
favour of the tenants. They made it almost impossible to cancel a lease, and
if a landlord wanted to sell his land the tenant had the right of pre-emption.
As a negative consequence of this, however, no landowner wanted to make
a long-term tenancy contract any more, preferring to let the land informally
for one season only and then demand a rent that was about ten times as
high as it should normally have been. The government reacted to this situ-
ation and in 1992 raised rents officially to more than three times the amount
they had been before, following the principles of a free market economy.