which has experienced fuel shortages in the past few years

Egypt's smart card system for subsidised fuel will come into effect in July for diesel and in August for gasoline, Prime Minister Hisham Qandil said in a press conference on Saturday.

Initially there will be no limits imposed on the quantities consumers can use, said the prime minister, a change in policy compared with previous announcements regarding the scheme.

In March, then-planning minister Ashraf El-Araby announced that the smart cards would entitle owners of vehicles with smaller engines (1,600 cc or smaller) to an annual 1,800 litres of subsidised fuel, over which motorists will have to pay market prices.

But officials present at the press conference stressed that the aim of the new system is now to tackle smuggling of subsidised fuel, which they blame for fuel shortages.

"Although fuel quantities distributed to gas stations exceed consumption by 20 to 30 percent, there are still shortages,” said Tarek El-Barkatawi, head of the Egyptian General Petroleum Company

Egypt, which has experienced fuel shortages in the past few years, was hit by particularly severe shortages this year. 

While the government blames fuel smugglers for the crisis, many gas stations say they do not receive the required quantities.

Prime Minister Qandil said that an island in the Mediterranean had sent a letter to the Egyptian government requesting it put a stop the smuggling of Egyptian fuel. He did not name the island in question.

Post offices, traffic points and branches of the Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit will be among the distribution points for smart cards.

Owners of diesel-powered vehicles, mainly taxis and microbuses, which according to government records number one million, will simply have to pick up their cards from designated distribution points. 

According to the ministry of finance, vehicles without a traffic licence such as three-wheeled tuktuks and agricultural vehicles will be eligible for smart cards according to a new system to be introduced in September. Any fuel sold outside the smart card system will be sold at cost price, said El-Barkatawi.

The government says it has already implemented the first phase of the smart card system, which consisted of issuing cards for tanker trucks and gas stations, and building a database of companies and depots for distribution.

The government has announced many times its ambition to reduce fuel subsidies that consume around a fifth of budget expenditures.

Every transaction carries some risk, security experts agree, but the agent seems to have conflated a couple of security concerns.

Chipped cards — or "smart cards," which On the Spot and More for Your Money have been writing about for weeks — are the standard in much of the world, but not in the U.S. They're beginning to creep into use here, especially as consumer demand for them grows. They come in two varieties: Chip and PIN, and Chip and Signature. The PIN is the more secure of the two.

Much has been made of the notion that the unscrupulous can grab its signal and have their way with your card (or your passport, which also contains such a chip). Although anything is possible, this, several experts told me, is improbable.

First, the thief would have to be physically close, said Terry Hartmann, vice president of security solutions for Unisys. How close? Four inches. So unless that thief snuggled up to you, he or she probably couldn't get into that chip.

Second, even if the chip is breached, the information is heavily encrypted, said Dale Thompson, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. What someone gets is a serial number "that really has nothing to do with your PIN," Thompson said. "It's not your credit card number, it's not your Social Security number, it's not even your name."

And third, said Phil Lieberman, chief executive of Lieberman Software in Los Angeles, "The card itself is dynamic. Every time you do a transaction, it changes. Even if you skim it once, you can't really reproduce that result."

Although having a Radio Frequency Identification-blocking wallet may help — it adds another layer of security, Hartmann said, and security is all about layers — it's probably not going to protect your card from the PIN stealer that Taylor's agent fears. Why? Because to use the card, you must take it out of the wallet. The magic shield is gone.

The bigger concern, Hartmann said, is the magnetic stripe card that predominates in the U.S. If the card is lost, anyone can use it fairly easily. A chipped card that requires only a signature, which is what many banks are issuing, has some of the same issues.
Read the full story at wwww.beralleshoes.com!