Egypt approves Fujairah oil free zone in New Alamein

The cabinet approved a special freezone for Fujairah Alamein Oil and Gas Company in New Alamein to store and trade crude oil and petroleum products, according to a Cabinet statement. The roughly 738k-sqm site is next to El Hamra Port’s expansion area, with all products from the zone to be exported. The company’s incorporation has been completed and other approvals are still pending.

IN CONTEXT- The move complements Fujairah and Western Desert Operating Petroleum Company’s (Wepco) USD 457 mn expansion of El Hamra Port, which aims to raise crude-storage capacity to 5.3 mn barrels from 2.5 mn and add 130k tonnes of petroleum-product capacity. Fujairah International Oil and Gas Corporation is also reportedly in talks with EGPC over leasing Red Sea storage facilities.

A surge with a reactor

Egyptian imports of Russian electrical equipment, machinery, and spare parts jumped 949.7% in the first five months of 2026, hitting USD 178.4 mn against USD 17 mn a year earlier, Al Arabiya reports. Total imports from Russia rose 48.5% over the same period to USD 3.37 bn, driven by fuel, oils, and distilled products (up 477.9% to USD 779.6 mn), grain (up 7% to USD 1.09 bn), and iron and steel manufactured goods (up 53.8% to USD 353.2 mn) — even as iron and steel imports fell 40.1% to USD 251.7 mn.

El Dabaa’s buildout has been quite active: In late May, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy entity Rosatom delivered roughly 2k tonnes of equipment to the El Dabaa construction site, which it described as the largest shipment in its history for a single nuclear power plant. The delivery included a nearly 330-tonne reactor pressure vessel for Unit 2, along with four steam generators and a pressurizer for Unit 1. Rosatom’s reactor pressure vessel for Unit 2 was installed in July, following the same milestone at Unit 1 in November 2025, with the May delivery preceding the Unit 2 installation.

But it’s likely El Dabaa isn’t the whole story. “Other industries and companies are also involved in purchasing Russian electrical equipment,” Head of Research at Confluence Consultants Amandeep Ahuja tells EnterpriseAM, pointing specifically to EV charging infrastructure, exploration machinery tied to Russian stakes in Egyptian offshore gas fields, and a dedicated “Russian industrial zone” in the Suez Canal Economic Zone. She says this zone brings in equipment including electric motors, signaling that Egypt’s National Railway is sourcing equipment from Russian suppliers.

Nevertheless, Ahuja says El Dabaa likely accounts for the bulk of this specific spike, but the rest of 2026 will probably look different. With Rosatom’s shipments largely complete for now, the plant’s remaining work this year is expected to focus on local assembly rather than more large imports from Russia — though the potential effect of recent safety allegations on the timeline is unclear.

IN CONTEXT- Egypt-Russia trade has grown steadily through the 2020s, Ahuja notes, evolving from its traditional foundation of wheat, iron, and defense procurement toward heavy electrical machinery, which she links largely to El Dabaa. Before the nuclear plant, electrical equipment and machinery were a negligible slice of Egypt's Russian imports, she says, framing the broader shift as part of Egypt’s push to diversify its energy mix and insulate itself from shocks like the Ukraine war and the Iran conflict, both of which strained Egypt’s energy supply directly.

One step closer

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has given Commercial International Bank (CIB) preliminary approval to establish Yomo, its long-flagged digital bank, according to a CIB statement. CIB is putting USD 300 mn behind the platform, structured with a holding company in Abu Dhabi for regulatory and tax reasons, CEO Hisham Ezz Al Arab has said, and an operating entity licensed in Cairo. The approval moves Yomo into its next phase: tech validation, cybersecurity testing, and customer-journey work ahead of a targeted 4Q 2026 launch.

IN CONTEXT- This is Egypt’s second licensed digital bank after the Banque Misr-backed Onebank. Ezz Al Arab walked us through the strategic logic back in April, telling us the play is “primarily about expanding the market rather than protecting the existing one,” aiming to reach Egypt’s large underbanked, digitally savvy population rather than defend CIB’s existing 2.5 mn customers — as of 2025 — from fintech competition.

Golden license

The Cabinet has approved a golden license for Nefer Minya for Renewable Energy (NMRE) to build a 1k-MW solar plant with 600 MWh of battery storage in West Minya, according to a statement. Spanning 20 sq km on the Nile’s west bank, the estimated USD 750 mn project is expected to employ some 2.5k workers during construction, and is slated for completion by 30 September 2027.

We’ve been tracking this plant for a while now: NMRE is the SPV built to run the plant, which is 51%-owned by Infinity Power Holding, a Masdar/Infinity Energy joint venture, and 49% by HAU Energy, the Hassan Allam Utilities platform backed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Meridiam. Last month, the Emerging Africa and Asia Infrastructure Fund and the EBRD were lining up financing against a total project cost of USD 764 mn. The discrepancy between this figure and the more recent USD 750 mn was not mentioned in the cabinet statement. Infinity Power also locked in Chinese PV supplier Aiko Energy for the plant’s modules in June.

Beating the clock

Palm Hills Developments’ subsidiary Palm for Investment and Real Estate Development signed an EGP 8 bn long-term syndicated financing agreement to fund and accelerate construction at Palm Hills New Cairo, according to a press release (pdf). Banque Misr is acting as initial mandated lead arranger, bookrunner, facility agent, and account bank, alongside the National Bank of Egypt as co-lead arranger and security agent. The agreement is meant to help deliver units to customers ahead of contractual dates.

IN CONTEXT- Palm Hills’ backlog of sold-but-undelivered units has hit a record EGP 263 bn, up from EGP 190 bn a year earlier. This is part of a sector-wide pattern where developers lock in record sales through long payment plans, then have to fund construction years before the money actually arrives, Al Ahly Pharos’ Hany Genena explained in earlier comments to EnterpriseAM. The backlog figure itself first surfaced in Palm Hills’ 1Q 2026 earnings, where revenue growth was driven partly by recognizing portions of that same EGP 263 bn pipeline.

Filled up and ready

Tanzania’s Egypt-made dam is online: Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan inaugurated Tanzania’s USD 2.9 bn, 2.1-GW Julius Nyerere dam and Hydropower Plant, according to a statement. The project, built by Egypt’s Arab Contractors and Elsewedy Electric, has nine generation units and an annual production capacity of about 6.3 GWh, providing renewable energy to more than 60 mn Tanzanians.

A long time coming: Tanzanian officials began the first filling of the dam in late 2022, following the installation of the first turbine unit as well as the placement of the roller-compacted concrete for the main body a year earlier.

More on the way? A visit to Dar es Salaam last month by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi yielded proposals on shipping, ports, and food security, including a possible Safaga-Dar es Salaam shipping route and a Cairo-Dar es Salaam multimodal corridor.

More under our radar:

• The General Authority for Roads and Bridges has launched tenders for four road upgrade projects in the Red Sea and Qena governorates, covering more than 84 km at planned investments of about EGP 600 mn. (Al Borsa)
• The Communications Ministry has launched the trial version of BelMasry, a sovereign AI platform offered at no charge to support Egyptian Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic through speech-to-text capabilities, machine translation into 50 languages, and text-to-speech services. (Statement)

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