The headlines from this morning

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

• The government will stop charging the 5% development fee on handsets that zone-based manufacturers sell into the domestic market, trading part of its fee revenue for new investment in local assembly. The exemption covers factories operating in the economic and private investment zones, which were paying the fee on phones they released onto the local market, where zone output is cleared as an import;
• The EGX30 closed October down 4.43% at 49.6k points, its second losing month in a row and the benchmark’s first back-to-back losses this year. March, June, and September also closed in the red. The index opened the month at 51.9k, climbed as high as 54.1k, and bottomed at 47.9k — an 11.4% peak-to-trough swing inside four weeks, by our math. The only index on the board to finish green was the EGX T-Bonds, up 0.88% to 2.7k;
• Egypt wants the EGP to be “legally convertible” outside the country, meaning it can be exchanged beyond our borders and held in bank accounts abroad, Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) Governor Hassan Abdalla said at Egypt Forum 2026 late last month. Abdalla thinks it’s doable within five years, but how fast Egypt gets there depends on how much the world needs to buy Egyptian goods and services, and how much investors trust the currency;
• The country’s non-oil private sector stayed in contraction in October, with output and new orders falling at their fastest in four months. The S&P Global Egypt PMI held at 47.2, unchanged from September — a 10th month below the 50.0 no-change mark and below the survey’s long-run average of 48.2 — while employment returned to decline and business confidence slipped to a seven-month low.