MANUFACTURING-

Mienta to expand manufacturing in Egypt: French home appliance manufacturer Mienta will invest USD 5 mn to establish a factory in the Elsewedy industrial zone in Ain Sokhna, the company (pdf) and the Suez Canal Economic Zone said yesterday after signing a land allocation agreement. The factory is expected to start operations next year and will produce 650k appliances by 2025. This is the company’s third factory in Egypt.

FINTECH-

BanknBox to set up shop in Egypt as it looks to regional expansion: Digital banking and third-party processing platform BanknBox plans to invest USD 10 mn to establish a regional headquarters in Maadi as it looks to expand in the Middle East region and Africa, the company’s CEO and co-founder Bassem Mahmoud told Enterprise. BanknBox is currently in the process of finalizing agreements to provide services to five fintech companies and banks in Egypt, he said, declining to provide the names of the entities.

A CBE sweetener: Mahmoud said that BanknBox chose to HQ in Egypt after the Central Bank of Egypt published new licensing rules for digital banks. BanknBox already provides services to digital and traditional banks across the Middle East region including Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Libya.

NATIONAL DIALOGUE-

Calls for debt ceiling as national debt surges: Economists and MPs urged the government to do more to rein in external borrowing at the National Dialogue yesterday, calling for an end to financing national projects with foreign loans and the introduction of a cap on national debt.

Remember: External debt reached a new record high of USD 165.4 bn in 3Q 2022-23, climbing 1.5% from the previous quarter, while local debt has reached EGP 5 tn. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to have risen to 96% during the previous fiscal year from 87.6% the year before on the back of the weaker EGP and rising interest rates.

What they said: Abdel Fattah El Gebaly, assistant rapporteur of the dialogue’s budget committee, said that the Unified Finance Law should be amended to introduce a ceiling on foreign borrowing, while several participants — including Mostafa Salam, deputy chair of the House Budget Committee, and dialogue board member Gouda Abdel Khalek — called for a moratorium on the use of FX loans to finance projects.

COMMODITIES-

GASC announces fresh wheat tender: The General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) has launched an international tender for an undisclosed amount of wheat on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, Al Borsa reports. The shipment will take place between 1 September and 25 October and payment will be funded by the International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation.

ENERGY-

Dragon Oil to up Egypt production by a quarter: Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) subsidiary Dragon Oil expects to increase oil output in Egypt by 27% to 70k barrels a day in October when it begins production at the North Safa oil field in the Gulf of Suez, reports Asharq Busine ss, citing a government official. The company will start production within the next two months at a rate of 15k barrels per day. The field has confirmed reserves of around 170 mn barrels. Dragon Oil’s discovery of the field in early 2022 was one of the largest made in the area over the past two decades.

REAL ESTATE-

Heliopolis Housing has a partner for Heliopark: Heliopolis Housing and Development’s (HHD) board of directors approved an offer from an unnamed real estate company to co-develop the Heliopark project, the company said in an EGX disclosure (pdf) yesterday. It also greenlit a three-year contract with Matrix Company to manage and operate Merryland Park, worth around EGP 17.5 mn.

Remember: HHD received an offer last month from an undisclosed developer to co-develop the 77k-feddan project. The state-owned company put the New Cairo project back out to tender after scrapping a partnership agreement with Mountain View earlier this year.

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