Egypt has received the USD 3.5 bn cashbased portion of the Alam El Roumdevelopment agreement from Qatari Diar, according to a statement from the cabinet.

While the IMF’s recent staff-level agreement emphasized broad fiscal discipline, a senior government official tells us that the receipt of this specific Qatari inflow was the catalyst required to satisfy the Fund’s requirements regarding foreign currency buffers and the closure of financing gaps.

As part of the Finance Ministry’s commitment to deleveraging, the government will allocate 50% of these proceeds toward the direct reduction of public debt. The remaining half will be channeled into the Central Bank of Egypt’s foreign reserves to provide an additional buffer against external shocks — carrying on with a blueprint laid out with last year’s Ras El Hekma agreement.

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