Egypt | - Part 2

As Election Begins, El-Sisi Ponders How Hard to Push Egypt

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Horns blare as the car screeches to a halt near a Cairo supermarket. “Don’t you have any integrity?” the driver screams at a man erecting a poster of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi ahead of this week’s elections. “Hasn’t he done enough to us?” The billboard was extolling the achievements of the former army general, who is running virtually unopposed for a second, four-year term with seemingly much to brag about. After…

Desert Sun to Power Upper Egypt With $2.8 Billion Solar Park

Posted on by The Editorial Team

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Egypt on Tuesday inaugurated the first solar power plant at a remote desert complex where the government plans to generate as much as 1.8 giga watts from the sun, cutting the most populous Arab nation’s reliance on dirty and expensive fossil fuels. The plant, developed by Germany-based Ib Vogt GmbH and a local company called Infinity Solar Systems, began supplying the national grid in December, Ib Vogt Chief Executive Officer Anton Milner…

Egypt Inflation Enters Post-Float Target Range for First Time

Posted on by The Editorial Team

TUNIS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Inflation in urban parts of Egypt slowed to a 17-month low, for the first time entering a broad target range the central bank set after floating the currency in November 2016. The annual rate eased to 14.4 percent in February, from 17.1 percent a month earlier, the state-run statistics agency said. As prices soared following the decision to lift currency controls, the central bank had announced a target of…

Egyptian Billionaire’s Bank Seeks Acquisitions to Bolster Growth

Posted on by The Editorial Team

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Beltone Financial Holding SAE, the Egyptian investment bank owned by billionaire Naguib Sawiris, is planning financial acquisitions to diversify the products it offers in frontier and emerging markets. “Beltone is in a very big growth mode,” Chief Executive Officer Bassem Azab said in an interview in Cairo. “We spent the past two years establishing and re-positioning ourselves in investment banking, asset management and brokerage. Now that we have our pillars reinforced on…

Egypt Economy: Four Tailwinds for Economic Growth in 2018

Posted on by The Editorial Team

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Egypt’s economy took a battering after the revolution of 2011, with annual growth declining to 3.1% in 2011-16 from an average of 6.2% in 2005-10. But the economy should recover in 2018, helped by four tailwinds: declining inflation, lower interest rates, recovering tourism and gas production from a new field. Egypt’s macroeconomic conditions were dire in 2016. Foreign currency was in short supply, resulting in the emergence of a…

Egypt Inflation Rate Drops as Currency Float Shock Eases

Posted on by The Editorial Team

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Egypt’s monthly urban inflation rate fell for the first time in more than two years as the impact of lifting currency controls eased. The month-on-month inflation rate came in at minus 0.2 percent in December, its lowest rate since November 2015, while the annual inflation rate eased to 21.9 percent from 26 percent the previous month, according to the state-run statistics agency CAPMAS. Annual prices were affected by a slowing of…

Egypt Presidential Vote in March as Top El-Sisi Rival Out

Posted on by The Editorial Team

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Egypt’s top election body said Monday that the next presidential election will be held in March, and gave prospective candidates about three weeks to declare. So far the race has only one potential contender: incumbent Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. His most serious possible challenger to date, former premier and air force general Ahmed Shafiq, backed out of contention late Sunday after a mysterious string of events. That left the field wide open…

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