The government is in talks with the IMF to raise its USD3 billion loan program to more than USD5 billion.

 The government expects to borrow at least USD1.5 billion between now and the end of the year, Minister of Finance said. This includes the planned USD500 million issuances of CNY-denominated bonds in October and JPY-denominated bonds in November.

 The IMF expects our budget deficit to widen significantly during FY 2023-24 to reach 10.7% of GDP.

Bloomberg reported Friday that an IMF mission could arrive in Cairo to start the first and second reviews this month.

 Shell Oil has teamed up with an unnamed investor owned by the Saudi government to target a stake in the military-owned filling station operator Wataniya. China’s North Petroleum also submitted an offer. The government has said that it aims to conclude the sale before the year is out.

The Russian government cancelled the project to build an industrial zone in Egypt's Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone).

Standard Chartered sees no devaluation, changes to interest rates before the end of this year. 

The EBRD is considering providing a sovereign loan of up to EUR165 million to upgrade the Egypt’s electricity transmission grid. 

Centamin wants to pump USD440 million into its Egypt operations within a two-year period. 

We published our Egypt pharmaceutical sector update 2024 report, in which we present sector outlook, hopes, fears, catalysts and top picks, inter-company comparison, individual pharma players assumptions, upside triggers, risks, updated FVs, multiples and recommendations, and company valuation breakdown for ISPH (FV: EGP4.12, OW), PHAR (FV: EGP38.79, OW), RMDA (FV: EGP2.79, OW), AXPH (FV: EGP169.46, EW), CPCI (FV: EGP40.10, EW), and ADCI(FV: EGP69.73, EW). For more details, please refer to our report published this morning.

FRA published the disclosure report of Mopco concerning the merger with its 99.9% owned ENPC. Mopco’s BoD shall call for an EGM to vote for merger terms, including:

• The merger of MFPC with its 99.9% owned company ENPC, based on the equity value of both companies as of December 2022. 
• Mopco will have a paid-in capital post-merger of EGP20.792 billion compared to the current EGP2.291 billion (standalone),
• Accordingly, MFPC will issue the new shares considering that each MFPC share before the merger will be equivalent to 9.07476 shares after the merger. 
• Conclusion: The merger has an embedded stock dividend distribution, which is financed from reserves and retained earnings. Since MFPC already owned most of ENPC and it was consolidated on its books, this does not change the total equity value of MFPC from our point of view, but the equity value will be distributed over the new number of shares. Accordingly, the FV will change from EGP250.67 to EGP27.62 after the issuance of the new shares. 

The Egyptian government is currently studying two separate offers submitted by ORAS (FV: EGP181.70, OW) and Norwegian Scatec to execute wind energy production projects in Egypt until 2029 with a capacity of 3 GW each, according to media sources.

Al Mansour Automotive is looking to set up a USD35 million car assembly and spare parts plant.