Egypt Hires Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman for Dollar Bond Sale

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Egypt has appointed banks including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to sell dollar bonds in the first quarter of the year to help reduce the budget deficit.

The country also picked HSBC Holdings Plc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for the deal and hired BNP Paribas SA, Natixis SA, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA and Standard Chartered Plc for the issuance of euro-denominated debt, according to a statement from the Ministry of Finance on Monday. Cairo-based Banque Misr SAE and National Bank of Egypt were appointed to help on both transactions.

Egypt plans to issue between $3 billion and $7 billion of international bonds this quarter, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said on Sunday. An outflow of foreign capital in local debt markets is testing the government’s ability to meet budget-deficit reduction targets in the wake of a bailout package with the International Monetary Fund, which called for cost-cutting measures.

Egypt also plans to sell green bonds and debt in an Asian currency for the first time in the 2018-2019 fiscal year. The draft budget for 2020, which begins in July, sees the deficit falling to 7 percent and the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio retreating to 79.4 percent from around 98 percent in the current fiscal year.