A banking consortium is waiting on the Finance Ministry to issue a guarantee for a USD 602 mn loan for the Suez Canal Authority (SCA). The facility will finance several of the authority’s planned construction projects, unnamed industry sources tell Al Shorouk. Consortium members include CIB, Banque Misr, NBE, AAIB, Banque du Caire, and the Suez Canal Bank. A separate CIB-NBE-Banque Misr-AAIB consortium had also offered to provide the SCA with a EUR 300 mn loan to finance its agreement with Dutch Royal IHC to purchase two dredgers, according to the sources. The SCA has yet to respond to the offers, however, and will likely borrow from international institutions that have offered better rates and repayment conditions, the newspaper says.

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