The headlines from this morning

Missed this morning’s edition of EnterpriseAM? Here are the top stories in a nutshell.

• Most analysts expect the Central Bank of Egypt to keep interest rates on hold at Thursday’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting, with the government’s freeze on fuel prices through December keeping a lid on inflation for now. The overnight deposit rate stands at 19% against urban headline inflation of 13.9% in September, a real-rate cushion of about 5.1 percentage points;
• The country’s post-IMF economic framework now has a name, a structure, and a deadline: Planning Minister Ahmed Rostom laid out the National Economic Transformation Program 2027-2030 during a session at the forum. The program has three pillars, four axes, 40 targets, 185 key measures, and 150 performance indicators — including 20 legislative and 25 institutional reforms;
• An IMF mission arrived in Cairo yesterday to start talks on the eighth and final review of our USD 8 bn Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and the last review under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF). That’s weeks ahead of the second half of November we had been told to expect last week. Clearing both reviews would unlock some USD 2.3 bn, with about USD 1.5 bn under the EFF and USD 800 mn under the RSF;
• The EGX is switching its SME market index to equal weighting, so a company’s size will no longer set its weight in the gauge. From 1 December, Tamayuz becomes Tamayuz All-Share EWI, with every constituent carrying the same share of the index instead of being weighted by freefloat market cap. The old Tamayuz capped any single name at 35% of the index by freefloat-adjusted market cap, under the methodology the EGX set at launch in 2021.