The government is selling shares in 32 state-owned companies as Egypt continues to struggle with its financial crisis.
Egypt has announced the signing of several contracts for the sale of public goods worth $1.9bn additional opportunities its private companies.
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly made the announcement late on Tuesday.
The deals are seen as necessary to ease the pressure on the Egyptian pound, bolster hard currency reserves, and help moderate the economy under a $3bn IMF loan program.
The new deals include the sale of shares in the state-owned telecommunications company Telecom Egypt; minority stakes in three oil and petrochemical companies in Abu Dhabi’s $800m ADQ investment fund; $700m in hotel deals to ICON, the hospitality group of Egypt’s Talaat Mostafa group and part of Ezz Dekheila’s $241m steel company.
Madbouly said the government is a quarter of the way through a list of 32 state-owned companies that will sell shares as the populous Arab nation continues to struggle with economic problems.
Egypt is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, and its economy has taken a hit since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, one of the world’s largest wheat exporters. the world’s largest grain exporters, last year.
Since the Russian invasion, Egypt’s currency has nearly halved, causing foreign investors to withdraw more than $20bn from Egypt’s financial markets, and inflation has worsened.
According to government statistics, about a third of Egypt’s 105 million people are poor.
In April 2022, Egypt announced plans to attract $ 10bn in the next four years – public administration measures are also needed to meet several foreign debts in the next few months.
The government had aimed to raise $2bn from a bond sale by the end of June, but the delay further weakened the value of the Egyptian pound.
Egypt has plans to sell more assets in the coming months, including the Gabal el-Zeit wind farm, the Wataniya Petroleum group and a power plant developed by Nokia, Planning Minister Hala el-Said said.