Cairo – Mubasher: Egypt aims to renew a $2 billion financing deal with international banks, in line with issuing dollar-denominated Eurobonds as an alternative source of funding, finance minister Amr El-Garhy told Bloomberg.
This financing deal will remain unchanged in size and probably in duration, El-Garhy added, pointing out that final details are not authenticated yet.
It is worth mentioning that international banks offered to increase this purchasing deal to $5 billion upon its extension.
Renewing this deal matches with the Egyptian government’s plans on deficit-financing and foreign debt repayments, El-Garhy noted in an interview in Washington on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings.
Egypt is planning to sell $4 billion of dollar-denominated bonds and 1.5 billion euro ($1.8 billion) of euro-denominated debt by the first quarter of 2018, he said.
“We are diversifying our sources of financing. We might start with the dollar-denominated issuance and then we can go for the euro.” El-Garhy said.
The minister forecasted the International Monetary Fund to provide another $4 billion loan in two tranches of financing prior to the end of the current fiscal year ends in June.
Egypt had received about $4 billion loan from the IMF through $2.75 billion and it will obtain a $12 billion loan.
In November, the IMF approved a $12-billion three-year loan program to Egypt, under which the country received the first and second instalments of $2.75 billion and $1.25 billion, respectively, of $4 billion tranche of the loan.
