The IMF will send a mission on 1 October to wrap up its fifth and sixth reviews of our USD 8 bn Extended Fund Facility Arrangement, a senior government official told EnterpriseAM late last week. Less definite on the mission’s arrival date was IMF Communications Director Julie Kozack, who said in a press briefing Thursday that the completion of the reviews and preceding visit from the IMF mission would happen this fall — so anytime until the end of November.

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“Now is the time for Egypt to carry out deeper reforms to really unlock the country’s growth potential,” Kozack said. The country needs to do this “[to] create high quality jobs for the growing population and to sustainably reduce the vulnerabilities that Egypt has and also to increase the country’s resilience to shocks,” she argued.

Progress on the privatization front is one of the fund’s most important demands, a source close to discussions between the IMF and Egypt told EnterpriseAM. For the IMF, privatizing state assets doesn’t just create FX inflows; it also works toward expanding private sector activity in the economy, we were told.

We are expecting some progress on the privatization front, now that the government has completed its census of state-owned companies setting the stage for the fourth wave of privatization. We have more on the census in the news well, above.

Phasing out fuel subsidies also features high on the IMF’s list of demands, and now is a better time than any to make progress on this, our source told us. Stable oil prices, a weakening USD, falling interest rates, and easing inflation open the door for the country to more easily close the gap between the cost and selling prices of fuel at Egyptian pumps. The country’s fuel pricing committee will meet later this month to decide on whether to increase fuel prices.

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