Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We hope you survived yesterday’s sandstorm and that your weekend plans are all indoors.

Eat your heart out, Mad Max: Photos of massive dust clouds and yellow skies, reports of trees falling on cars, and of a billboard falling and disrupting traffic on the 6th of October Bridge were everywhere in the local press and across social media yesterday, so be careful out there, folks, and try to stay off the roads.

PSA- It doesn’t seem like it will let up today, with the mercury rising above 40°C and heavy winds expected in the afternoon, according to the National Meterological Authority. The mercury is set to cool off overnight to 23°C, our favorite weather app tells us. Tomorrow will be only marginally cooler, with the mercury hovering around 38°C during the day, and falling to 21°C during the night.

If you’re set on getting out of the house, maybe a spa off of our list today in the Enterprise Guide to help drown out the insanity could be the only activity worth doing.

Enterprise Weekend comes out each Friday at 9:00am CLT. We’ll be back on Sunday at 6am with EnterpriseAM. Until then: Enjoy the weekend.

LAST WEEK IN 3 MINS-

It was a legislation-heavy week, with some updates here and there on everything from energy to a slew of new investments. But leading the conversation, however, were the new tax changes that are coming.

TAXATION-

#1-MPs approved a raft of new tax changes that would:

• Raise the personal income tax exemption threshold to EGP 36k from EGP 24k;
• Introduce a new 27.5% higher rate of tax for people earning more than EGP 1.2 mn a year;
• Put in placea new 5-20% ‘entertainment tax’, new fees on duty-free products, a stamp tax hike on ins., and a 10% development fee on certain imported luxury goods;
• Slash the 10% capital gains tax to just 50% of the realized gains made from selling shares in newly-listed companies, and dropping that to 25% two years after the legislation is passed;
• Grant an incentive worth 5% of the annual tax bill to individuals who file underthe new e-invoicing system;
• And allow those with annual revenues of less than EGP 10 mn to be subject to a flat-rate tax.

What’s next: The bill will be passed to President Abdel Fattah El Sisi to sign into law.

DEBT WATCH-

#1- There’s some speculation that the IMF could delay its review of Egypt’s USD 3 bn loan program to September to give the government more time to comply with the fund’s requirements amid challenging economic headwinds, economist Ali Metwally reportedly told Al Arabiya last week.

REMEMBER- Egypt is awaiting its first review for its USD 3 bn loan program, which has been on hold for 2.5 months. The IMF is yet to give any indication about when we might expect IMF officials in Cairo for the staff-level review.

#2- Panda bond coming next quarter: The Finance Ministry expects to go ahead with its maiden USD 500 mn CNY-denominated bond issuance in 3Q 2023, instead of 1Q 2023 as initially planned, due to challenging international market conditions.

REGULATION WATCH-

#1-The FRA hiked capital requirements for non-bank lenders by 50%: NBFS companies have one year to increase their paid and issued capital to EGP 75 mn to comply with the Financial Regulatory Authority’s (FRA) new capital requirements. The change marks a 50% increase from the previous minimum requirement of EGP 50 mn. The new regs are designed to reduce risk in the sector and ensure non-banking financial services firms have a buffer against external financial shocks.

#2-Some prepaid cards can no longer be used to make international transactions, a central bank source confirmed to Enterprise, after the news was reported in local media and circulated widely online. The move by the central bank to stop the use of prepaid cards for foreign-currency transactions only applies to those cards that aren’t linked to bank accounts, the source said — which we understand to include those issued by digital payments companies Klivvr, Nexta, and Telda.

INVESTMENT WATCH-

#1- We have loads of Chinese investment interest in the SCZone: The Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) signed agreements with a number of Chinese companies that could see more than USD 700 mn invested in projects in China’s TEDA industrial zone in Ain Sokhna.

#2- And a new Aussie phosphoric acid plant in the works: An Australian consortium plans to invest USD 875 mn to build a phosphoric acid plant in the Red Sea port town of Safaga. The project should have an annual production capacity of some 700k tons.

WHAT’S HAPPENING NEXT WEEK-

It’s the first full workweek of June, which will bring us updates on several economic indicators:

#1-S&P Global will release May’s PMI figures on 5 June.Last month’s PMI indicated that the activity in the non-oil private sector is still in contraction as the depreciation of the EGP, high inflation, and import restrictions continued to weigh on inventories.

#2- Capmas and the central bank should be out with May’s inflation data on 8 June. Inflation had slowed in Aprilthanks to a favorable base effect, the stabilization of the EGP-USD exchange rate, and a slight slowdown in food price growth. But don’t expect May’s inflation figures to be rosey: Price hikes are expected to accelerate again due to the government’s recent decisions to hike the prices of diesel and subsidized commodities sold to ration card holders as well as further currency weakness, analysts said earlier.

#3- Foreign reserves: The central bank will publish foreign reserves figures for June next week.

We could be looking at the start of a new IPO: The EGX is working on listing an unnamed energy company’s shares on the bourse within two weeks, with a goal of starting trading in a month or two, EGX head Ramy El Dokany told CNBC Arabia last week.

And continued action with the state’s privatization drive: The clock is ticking on National Investment Bank subsidiary NI Capital’s plans to complete stake sales in two state-owned companies before the end of the government’s fiscal year in June. Under this schedule, NI Capital has about four weeks to complete one more sale after it finalized its 10% stake sale in Telecom Egypt (TE) last week. Companies in the pipeline include those hailing from the oil, petrochemicals or transport sectors.

The Senate will reconvene on Sunday: The FY 2023-2024 socioeconomic development plan approved by House and Senate economic committees last week could be up for discussion and a vote.

The National Dialogue will also resume on Sunday after a week-long break. Sunday’s session will see a proposed Freedom of Information Act up for discussion, followed by two more sessions throughout the week where participants will continue to discuss a number of political, economic, and social challenges.

Further afield, OPEC+ will meet in Vienna, Austria on Sunday where the bloc is expected to discuss oil production cuts.

Check out our full calendar on the web for a comprehensive listing of upcoming news events, national holidays and news triggers.

YOUR MOST CLICKED LINKS-

• The new raft of taxes MPs approved last week seemed to be on everyone’s minds, with most of you looking at earlier Enterprise stories on the tax changes. (Enterprise, Enterprise)
• A lot of you were curious about our new state privatization program advisor, Mahmoud El Sakka. (LinkedIn)
• Edita’s acquisition of frozen bakery producer Fancy Foods also got some attention. (Statement)
• Former deputy Prime Minister Ziad Bahaa El Din’s op-ed on the urgency of implementing Egypt's economic reform agenda got a lot of clicks. (Financial Times)
• Credit Suisse’s forecast of a large fall in the EGP exchange rate to 45-50 against the greenback also turned heads. (Asharq Business)

AROUND THE WORLD IN SEVEN DAYS-

The US debt ceiling debacle is (nearly) over, after lawmakers in the House approved the agreement to raise the debt ceiling to allow the country to avoid a default. The bill cleared the GOP-controlled chamber 314-117 despite vocal opposition among a contingent of Republican lawmakers, and is now pending President Joe Biden’s ratification before 5 June.

In Turkey: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured his third term in office after Erdogan defeated opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdarogluin in a run-off vote.

ENTERPRISE IS LOOKING FOR SMART, TALENTED PEOPLE of all backgrounds to help us build some very cool new things. Enterprise — the essential morning read on all the important news shaping business and the economy in Egypt and the region — is looking for writers, reporters and editors to help us build out new publications. Today, we run four daily Egypt and MENA-focused publications, five weekly industry verticals, and a weekend lifestyle edition designed to make our readers feel just a bit smarter.

We have tons more in the pipeline — come help us build new publications. We offer the chance to work in a fast-paced newsroom on a broad range of topics and in a variety of formats. Our goal is simple: To create value for our growing community of >250k daily readers by telling stories that matter.

Journalists looking to explore business, finance and economic stories are welcome. So are recent journalism school graduates.

That said, we're looking for gifted story-tellers from all walks of life and across all professions, as long as they show a keen interest in learning to write about the stories, topics, businesses, and figures moving markets. Egyptian and foreign nationals alike are welcome to apply. So are job-switchers: If you’re an equities analyst tired of the rat race, we’re a great place to come work.

NEVER WORKED IN A NEWSROOM BEFORE? We have the Enterprise Business Writing Development Program. Whether you are a recent graduate, an industry vet, or looking to switch careers, the Enterprise Business Writing Development Program will give you the tools you need to tell the most important stories to our audience of C-suite officials, government ministers, diplomats, financiers, investors and entrepreneurs.

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Not an internship program — a career: The three-month program will see full-time, paid participants take part in workshops and lectures from veteran business journalists, while also working on and filing stories that will run on any of our publications. Those who have successfully completed the program, will then be given long-term job offers.

Apply directly to jobs@enterprisemea.com and mention “writing development program” in your subject line.