Traders move tankers to Port Said and Sidi Kerir as Saudi partially restarts East-West oil pipeline

Good morning, friends. We are heading to the weekend and two main stories have our attention — one about a new partnership in the fractional real estate market, and another about broad multilateral support for the country’s infrastructure guarantee facility.

Up first, Nawy Shares and CI Capital are teaming up to launch real estate investment funds under Financial Regulatory Authority oversight, moving Nawy’s EGP 10 bn fractional platform off civil-law contracts and into investment certificates. First subscriptions are targeted for early next year.

Good news from our backers: Ten development finance institutions — including AfDB, EIB, EBRD, and AIIB — have signed onto Egypt’s USD 520 mn Infrastructure Financing Guarantee Facility. The idea is to replace blanket sovereign guarantees with project-specific ones for private infrastructure. The sign-on is a good indicator ahead of the upcoming board vote at the World Bank and the IMF final review before the end of the year.

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We’re honored to have Ahmed Ali Abdelrahman join us as a guest speaker at the 2026 EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum — the AI edition.

Ahmed Ali Abdelrahman is a private equity and investment banking executive with over 30 years of experience across Egypt and the GCC, with a track record spanning deal origination, IPO and M&A execution, and building direct-investment platforms from the ground up. He currently serves as Managing Director and CEO of Post For Investment (PFI), where he oversees a c. EGP 17 bn (USD 340 mn) direct-investment portfolio and structured the firm’s first landmark exit in 2024. Previously, as Group Deputy CEO and CIO of Beltone Financial, he launched three new lending verticals, building an aggregate portfolio of EGP 2 bn within three years.

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Pipeline back, tankers chase

Traders are moving tankers to Port Said for ship-to-ship transfers and to Sidi Kerir for Saudi oil loadings, Reuters reports, citing traders familiar with the matter. This comes as Saudi Arabia partially restarted its East-West pipeline and could resume exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu after a drone attack took it offline last week.

REMEMBER- Since the US-Iran war disrupted flows in the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia had been routing around 4 mn bbl / day — roughly 4% of global supply — through this pipeline to Yanbu. Some of that crude then moved north through the Red Sea to Ain Sokhna, crossed via the Sumed pipeline, and loaded at Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean. Saudi crude through Sidi Kerir more than doubled to about 2.3 mn bbl / d in August. When the East-West pipeline was knocked offline, that whole chain stopped.

Why it matters: The restart is real, but partial. The line is pumping at a low rate for now — three of its 11 pumping stations were damaged in the attack. Aramco targets nearly 4 mn bbl / d throughput, with 40% of capacity expected within days, though a full restart will take six to eight weeks.

BP sale soon?

BP’s EVP of Production and Operations Gordon Birrell is reportedly visiting Egypt today, signaling that the company may soon select the winning bidder for its local gas assets, Arabic-language energy website Attaqa reports, citing unnamed sources.

IN CONTEXT- BP was reportedly exploring the sale of select natural gas assets in Egypt last May as part of a restructuring effort aimed at trimming debt and prioritizing higher-margin projects. The assets on the block — so far including BP’s offshore West Nile Delta fields — have drawn interest from UAE’s Dragon Oil, US private equity firm Carlyle Group, Mediterranean-focused Energean, and London-based Artemis Energy.

Salting away a stake

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is buying into Hassan Allam Utilities’ (HAU) desalination business, approving an equity investment of up to USD 32.1 mn for a minority stake in RWD Investments, according to a project disclosure. The Netherlands-based investment vehicle runs 79 desalination plants along Egypt’s coast through its subsidiaries.

The money splits two ways: a committed chunk for new B2B plants and upgrades, and an uncommitted tranche tied to three big PPP water projects still in the pipeline. The disclosure puts the total project cost at USD 92.9 mn and does not name the PPPs.

Why it matters: Equity is scarce for Egyptian water projects. The EBRD says local equity markets cannot fill the gap, adding that its role as a long-term equity investor will help absorb both financial and non-financial risks — the kind of backing that gives HAU the confidence to take on larger PPP projects.

REMEMBER- The bank’s ties to the group’s water business date to a USD 20 mn loan to Hassan Allam Holding in 2019 to finance its acquisition of specialized water desalination and treatment engineering firms. In January 2026, it lent EGP 350 mn to Ridgewood for Water Desalination, RWD’s main operating company. Meanwhile, we just learned earlier this week that the Finance Ministry is lining up over USD 3 bn worth of PPP projects spanning desalination, wastewater treatment, and electricity, including four desalination plants in Suez, Port Said, Alamein, and Ain Sokhna.

Lease-to-own awardees are in

The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) awarded plots to winning bidders in the country’s first lease-to-own industrial land round, allocating more than 300k sqm of serviced plots across eight industrial zones, according to an Industry Ministry statement. The allocations cover New Borg El Arab, Wadi El Natroun, Katameya, Tenth of Ramadan, New Sixth of October, Sadat, New Tiba, and New Akhmim. The tender offered 540 plots spanning more than 5.7 mn sqm across 20 industrial zones in 15 governorates. The statement does not say how many plots were awarded, how many bids the IDA received, or whether more rounds are planned.

What comes next for the awardees: Investors have 24 months from land handover to start production, with four fixed milestones: a building permit within six months, foundations within 12, all building-permit construction within 18, and an operating license and industrial registration by month 24. Missing any milestone triggers cancellation and land repossession, the authority said.

REMEMBER- The lease-to-own system launched last month to reduce the upfront capital manufacturers must commit to land before production begins. Investors can lease plots for 7-21 years at an annual rent starting at 5% of the land value and apply to buy after one year of operations, with rent paid deducted from the purchase price.

Building the paper trail

The Federation of Egyptian Industries’ real estate chamber is meeting with the central bank and Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) to talk property market rules and financing, Al Borsa reports, citing chamber head Tarek Shoukry. The agenda covers mortgage finance, more diverse funding channels for developers, and clearer rules on how developers, contractors, banks, buyers, and the state relate to each other. Shoukry said rising project costs are pushing developers to look beyond traditional bank loans, adding that the market needs clearer lines on who does what. No date or concrete proposals are out yet.

IN CONTEXT- The talks come as regulators are already closing a known gap. Former FRA chairman Sherif Samy told EnterpriseAM in June that long-term developer installments stay off I-Score because developers aren’t regulated lenders, calling for the Housing Ministry, FRA, and central bank to agree on a framework to bring them into the national credit system. That link is already starting to tighten when developers transfer receivables to mortgage finance companies, which must report buyers’ outstanding obligations to I-Score. The wider sector is also facing a new regulatory push around developer classification, escrow accounts, and standardized contracts.

Happening today

#1- The central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meets this evening, and the base case points to a fifth straight hold at 19.00%. The consensus that carried the last four meetings has cracked, though: HC Securities’ Heba Monir has broken ranks with a 100-bp hike call, arguing 4Q pressures will force the committee’s hand while most of the market still sees the MPC pausing the monetary easing cycle it started in February.

The case for a hold rests on August’s surprise: Urban inflation slowed to 14.5% in August, undershooting both the 15.5% analyst consensus and the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) own guidance for a 3Q pickup. With the corridor ceiling at 20% against that reading, the bank is sitting on a positive real yield of about 5.5%, room most analysts think it has no reason to spend. Core inflation edged up to 14.9% from 14.7%.

A hold, despite the core: “The divergence of the two paths [headline easing while core climbs] suggests part of the apparent calm comes from items with volatile prices, while the deeper pressure inside the price structure is still widening,” economist Hany Aboul Fotouh tells us. He still expects the CBE to hold, calling it the most likely outcome as it “balances high headline inflation against a rising core.”

The CBE has been tightening without touching the corridor. In Tuesday’s fixed-rate deposit auction, it absorbed EGP 536.95 bn from banks in seven-day deposits at 19.5%, taking in more than the EGP 499.84 bn that matured since last week (a net withdrawal of about EGP 37 bn) and deepening a liquidity tightening that some analysts read as a stand-in for a hike. The prior week’s operation pulled in around EGP 500 bn, so the absorption is climbing week on week, reaching a total of EGP 1.52 tn in September.

The carry trade is turning back Egypt’s way as the committee sits down. Foreign and Arab investors were net buyers of roughly USD 244 mn in secondary-market government debt yesterday, reversing the previous week’s USD 513 mn net sell, according to EGX data. Meanwhile, the USD slipped back below EGP 52 (buy 51.37 and 51.47 sell) after touching that level last week for the first time in three months.

#2- It’s the last day of EFG Hermes’ 12th Annual London Investor Conference, which is being held at Emirates Stadium under the theme “At the Home of Champions: MENA’s Market Leaders Meet Global Capital.” The gathering brought together more than 830 participants from around the world, including over 420 investors from 181 global institutions, alongside 125 presenting companies from seven MENA countries.

PSA-

WEATHER- Heat is ticking up in Cairo today, with a high of 33°C and a low of 23°C, according to our favorite weather app.

It’s nicer in Alexandria, with a high of 29°C and a low of 22°C.

And over the weekend, expect slightly cooler conditions in the capital (a high of 32°C) and for our friends on the Mediterranean (a high of 28°C). We might see light showers in the north.

The big story abroad

The US and China have extended the truce in their trade war by two months to 10 January, as Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives for his first stateside visit in 11 years for a three-day summit. Initially set to expire in November, the one-year truce, which will give the two sides more time to negotiate, involves maintaining a suspension of select US tariffs in exchange for Beijing’s continued supply of rare earth minerals.

Regional war severs travel routes: Oman and Azerbaijan suspended all Iranian airline flights into their countries after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that all Iranian airlines would be shut down worldwide starting Wednesday. Meanwhile, Iraq has banned Iranian flights to its capital Baghdad after Washington imposed sanctions on services provided to Iran’s aviation sector.

More disquiet over AI safety: An AI agent developed by OpenAI breached an Australian government-run health ‌data portal in June, increasing concerns over the technology’s safety and the possibility of going rogue. While the startup acknowledged that its models took unintended actions affecting multiple government websites and online services, it found no evidence of patient records being accessed.

Another disappointment for OpenAI: The 2024 move to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones “dramatically underperformed,” with OpenAI expressing disappointment over the surprisingly low user engagement with the AI features, legal filings by the startup show. The development follows a tense trade standoff since the iPhone maker accused OpenAI of large-scale trade secret theft.