Ghost in the machine

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OPENING NOTE

Bollywood and tech

There’s a distinct Bollywood-and-tech beat to this morning’s issue, including a look at why rising outsourcing revenues in India should give Egypt and Jordan significant pause — and a sit-down with a top Zoho exec about what drove the SaaS giant to open a UAE data center.

Also on our mind this morning: A squadron of Egyptian Air Force Rafale jets have deployed to the UAE to help defend the nation against Iranian drone strikes, the Emirates’ state news agency WAM reported (worth a click for the images, we promise you). Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed met with the fighter pilots a day after the two walked through an Abu Dhabi mall together.

The UAE and Egypt may have differences on issues like Sudan’s civil war, where they back different factions, but the two have drawn closer and closer together in recent years. The UAE’s massive Ras El Hekma project — dubbed by some as the “eighth emirate” or the “summer emirate” — bailed Egypt out of financial distress, setting the groundwork for a highly successful economic reform program that has so far stood up to fallout from the war in the Gulf. Abu Dhabi’s agriculture investments across Egypt are one of the lynchpins of its food security program, and ties between the UAE and Egyptian business communities are now much deeper than with their counterparts in Saudi.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi aren’t really on speaking terms, and relations between Egypt and Saudi have been cool for years. With Egyptian jets on the ground in the UAE and Riyadh having reportedly blocked US jets from flying out of Saudi Arabia, it’s hard not to wonder whether Riyadh risks being left out of what looks a lot like an emerging US-UAE-Egypt triangle.

Meanwhile, we’re keeping an eye on what’s going to happen next with the peace proposal ping-pong happening with the US and Iran. Washington rejected Tehran’s latest counter-offer on a peace proposal, raising questions on whether the stalemate will be resolved anytime soon.

The back-and-forth comes as the ceasefire remains fragile — the UAE said it intercepted two drones yesterday and a cargo ship was attacked on its way from Abu Dhabi to Qatar. The attacks come after Qatar appears to have pushed its first LNG cargo through the strait since the disruptions began, after reportedly securing Iran’s approval for the shipment to make its way to Pakistan. –Patrick

Ghost in the machine

India is giving us the single most important data point in the basic global services-export and outsourcing industry: The combined headcount of Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL Technologies has fallen by over 42k people across the last two years. TCS alone announced a 12k-person cut in 2025, the biggest workforce reduction in its history. More than 7.7k Indian IT professionals with fifteen-plus years of experience have been let go across the major Indian IT firms in this cycle, according to the staffing firm Xpheno.

The detail that should spur us to action is that all of this is happening while revenue is growing at these companies. TCS reported its 12k-person cut in the same quarter that revenue rose 1.3% and HCL grew 8.1%.

The labor that used to be the product is being substituted away in real time. The labor-driven cost arbitrage that built a USD 250 bn export sector over 30 years has collapsed beneath it — or at least is transforming into something materially different.

The substitute: AI.

This matters across MENA+ because India is arguably three to five years ahead of every services-export bet on our side of the Indian Ocean. The collective wagers we’re seeing in Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan are, at their core, the Indian bet of 1995 dressed in newer language, with closer proximity to Europe, and with faster internet connectivity. And the countries most exposed are the ones least able to absorb a loss — none has the foreign-exchange cushion to lose their respective bets quietly.

Egypt stands to lose the most — its offshoring sector hit USD 5.1 bn last year (worth more than the Houthi-impaired Suez Canal) and is targeting USD 12 bn and 630k jobs by 2029. Morocco’s USD 2.8 bn services-export sector is built on a similar foundation, with IT outsourcing at 40% of exports and call-center work at another 37%, dominated by Concentrix-owned Webhelp’s 10.5k-employee operation. The renewed Morocco Digital 2030 strategy is now explicitly chasing 270k jobs and roughly USD 4 bn in services exports by 2030. Jordan is making a smaller version of the same bet under the Jordan Source brand, with a tech sector of around 25k employees that the government wants to double by 2033.

Jordan might sound like an outlier: Jordan’s current sector is focused on Arabization — the practice of translating and adapting Western software and digital content into Arabic. Roughly 75% of all Arabic internet content is generated by Jordanian firms, according to t he US Commerce Department’s International Trade Administratio n.

And while it is a business line that once looked like a defensible cultural moat, it’s not anymore. Translation, including to and from Arabic, is exactly the work AI is currently eating fastest. Independent industry benchmarks in 2025 already showed LLMs winning 9 of 11 language pairs against dedicated translation engines, with Arabic explicitly identified as a language where models are now handling morphological complexity and dialect variation at production quality. Jordan’s Arabic edge is now being undone by AI cheaply, anywhere, and at scale.

The contrast with the UAE and Saudi Arabia tells us where the value is actually migrating, and it is the opposite end of the bet. The UAE has positioned itself at the frontier of capital and compute (we have more on how this bet is playing out in real time below) — a bet that countries without coffers as large can’t match. Microsoft is still on track to invest USD 15.2 bn in the UAE between 2023 and 2029, including a USD 1.5 bn equity stake in Abu Dhabi's G42 and over USD 4.6 bn in AI and cloud data center capacity. A consortium including Cisco, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank is building Stargate UAE, a 1-GW compute cluster that anchors a planned 5-GW US-UAE AI campus, the largest AI facility outside the United States. Saudi Arabia is making its own version of the same bet with PIF’s USD 100 bn Alat tech-manufacturing platform and the USD 20 bn DataVolt-Supermicro AI data center deal in Neom.

These are not labor-arbitrage outsourcing bets, but demand-side bets on the infrastructure that will host the AI substitution everyone else is exposed to.

Buyers of labor arbitrage are voting with their wallets: Klarna cut 700 customer service positions in 2023 and replaced them with an OpenAI-powered assistant that, within a month, was doing the work of all 700. By the 3Q 2025 earnings call, the AI was doing the work of 853 agents and the company was on track to halve its overall headcount by next year. Capital markets have also voted: Teleperformance is down over 82% over five years, Concentrix down over 84%. These are not small French firms in trouble. They are the names ITIDA in Egypt, AMDIE in Morocco, and Intaj in Jordan that have been holding up as their trophies. The market is repricing the business process outsourcing model on the assumption that the Great Displacement is happening right now.

The instinct, when one bet fails, is to make the same bet at a higher level of sophistication, and that is exactly the trap. The conversation across the region has already moved here: Climb the capability ladder out of voice BPO into engineering R&D, applied AI, specialized customer experience — what is “Stage 2” and “Stage 3” work of so-called “global competency centers,” in the language being used now. The decision-makers know something has shifted, but their response for now is to try to climb the ladder.

Our take: That is the wrong instinct. Climbing the value chain assumes the chain itself is static — and it isn’t. The same forces compressing voice BPO will likely compress engineering R&D, applied AI, and specialized customer experience on a slightly delayed timeline. Granted, this might come across as speculative, but here’s what we know for certain: The technology that does the substituting moves faster than the workforces being asked to retrain into the next rung. We would be running up an escalator going the other way.

The related hope is Jevons Paradox — that cheaper AI-driven services will expand the addressable market fast enough to absorb the labor being displaced, ultimately leaving the sector larger. It’s possible, of course, but the early evidence runs uniformly the other way — see rising Indian revenue and falling headcount. See Klarna. Productivity is so far outrunning any growth in demand. Betting a national employment strategy on Jevons eventually rescuing the math is a bet that the next two years will look nothing like the last two — and there’s nothing in the cards that suggests that’s the case.

And even the best-case scenario is a bit dim: There is a version of this where some of the higher-value work continues to be offshored to the region, and Cairo, Casablanca, and Amman remain cheaper than Frankfurt or London. Even in that version, the volume of jobs is an order of magnitude smaller than what the original bet was supposed to deliver. A handful of high-paying engineering and analytics — or legal, banker, and other back-office — positions in each capital is not a national employment strategy, but a recipe for rising unemployment among young, highly-educated, and credentialed professionals who will feel betrayed by a system that promised them respectable and sustainable careers.

The bottom line is that this is, in effect, our own version of the productivity paradox that the rich world is now confronting. India is showing us, in real time, that you can grow services-export revenue while shedding the people who used to deliver it. Companies who buy outsourcing services have shown us all that this is the model they intend to build, and capital markets have priced it in. We’re witnessing the early days of a transition that has already begun, against an industry whose buyers, capital allocators, and most experienced operators have all moved before we have even noticed.

The dream the region sold itself in 2010 is gone, and the most expensive thing we can possibly do is keep selling it to ourselves.

Make it compute

The largest US tech IPO of 2026 — a UAE-backed AI chipmaker — will price an already overflowing book this week. Cerebras’ offering of 28 mn shares is already 20x covered, with the California-based business expected to raise its price range by USD 10 per share to USD 125-135 as early as today, Bloomberg reports, citing people it says are in the know. The top of the range would imply a market cap of roughly USD 28.7 bn at listing (up from USD 23 bn in February) and IPO proceeds of about USD 3.8 bn (up from USD 3.5 bn originally), by our math.

This looks a lot like the moment that US capital markets first put a number on Abu Dhabi’s AI thesis. UAE entities make up 86% of Cerebras’s revenue. Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI, the research anchor of the UAE’s entire AI strategy, accounted for 62% of the firm’s 2025 top line, and Abu Dhabi-backed AI firm G42 accounted for 24%, according to the prospectus for the offering. G42 alone drove 85% of Cerebras’ revenue the year before.

What’s a little xenophobia among friends? Cerebras first filed to go public in 2024, but the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US opened a formal investigation into G42’s minority position, citing concerns that G42’s ties to Chinese tech companies could undermine US export controls and give Beijing access to advanced AI chips. The move was ultimately cleared after Cerebras restructured G42’s equity stake into non-voting shares with no board influence. UAE national security advisor Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan did a lot of diplomatic heavy lifting to get that to work out.

The semiconductor firm is also deploying AI infrastructure inside the UAE’s Stargateproject — the cluster being built alongside Nvidia, OpenAI, and Oracle, which is set to be operational this year with an initial 200 MW capacity, ITP reports, making the case for Cerebras as the compute backbone of a sovereign AI strategy.

The pitch? Cerebras wants to be seen as a credible Nvidia alternative with wafer-scale chips, backed by OpenAI compute demand and AWS. Whether the market is right to price in a smooth transition to a more global revenue mix — implied by the OpenAI and AWS agreements, but not yet visible in the financials — is the open question underneath the 20x book.

ADVISORS- Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, and UBS are quarterbacking the transaction.

Data moat

Indian software-as-a-service giant Zoho launched its first UAE data center regions in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as part of an AED 100 mn (USD 27.2 mn) investment plan to expand cloud infrastructure in the country. The move follows the company’s 2024 data center launch in Saudi Arabia and underscores a growing shift toward data localization in the Gulf, Hyther Nizam, Zoho’s CEO for Middle East and Africa, tells EnterpriseAM.

A natural progression: “Zoho’s investment in UAE and KSA infrastructure should be seen as both a strategic and regulatory move — but fundamentally driven by long-term positioning rather than compliance alone,” Nizam tells us. As more government agencies in critical sectors like healthcare and finance adopt Zoho for enterprise modernization, data localization has become essential to meet requirements on data privacy and security.

Uh, Enterprise? What’s Zoho? The company offers a suite of in-the-cloud software including CRM, mail, office, finance, and HR — among others — that powers millions of businesses around the world.

Data localization

The expansion is part of Zoho’s local-first approach across the Gulf. “As the company has expanded its enterprise footprint, it has prioritised being closer to customers, both geographically and in terms of compliance, cultural alignment, and operational trust,” Nizam notes.

Why it matters: Government and government-related clients in the Gulf are placing stricter requirements on data protection, sovereignty and regulatory compliance, especially for sensitive data. “This makes data localisation essential for us as we continue delivering the highest standards of privacy and security,” Nizam said. Data sovereignty is an issue from Saudi and the UAE to Egypt and beyond.

Data residency is becoming a dealbreaker for organizations handling sensitive information, particularly as AI integrates further into daily workflows. There is a clear expectation that data in industries like banking, healthcare, and financial services must remain within national borders and be handled in accordance with local laws. More and more government procurement processes are mandating strict data protection requirements, driving demand for tech providers that can guarantee in-country data storage, Nizam tells us.

What is driving demand?

In the UAE, public sector demand is shaping the market for locally hosted cloud services, while regulated industries and private companies are also moving toward similar standards as they work with government entities. “Demand for locally hosted cloud services in the UAE is being driven primarily by the government [public sector], which is perhaps the most influential force shaping demand,” Nizam noted.

The shift is also affecting private companies that want to work with government entities. “The private sector will naturally have to do so in its pursuit of public-private collaborations and contracts with government organisations,” Nizam says.

Indian SaaS pivot

Moving beyond export-led models: Zoho’s Gulf infrastructure push points to a broader shift among Indian SaaS companies, which are moving beyond export-led software sales toward local infrastructure, local hiring, and on-ground presence. “Indian SaaS companies have traditionally built for global scale, but market dynamics are clearly shifting toward localisation,” Nizam explains.

Requirements differ across Gulf markets: In Saudi Arabia, Nizam said national workforce policies such as Saudization require companies to prioritize local hiring, while in the UAE, local data center infrastructure is often necessary for serving enterprise and government clients with data sovereignty requirements.

Colocation model

Taking control of the stack: Unlike many competitors relying on global hyperscalers, Zoho owns and operates its data center stack through colocation partnerships. Managing its own infrastructure end-to-end across over 20 global data centers allows the company to optimize costs at scale and pass those efficiencies on to customers. “By avoiding dependency on third-party hyperscalers, Zoho retains full oversight of its infrastructure costs, mitigating the risk of sudden price increases from external providers,” Nizam tells us.

The 50-50 playbook

Oman-Turkey investment fund’s first moves: The USD 500 mn Turkey Oman Investment Company, a 50-50 joint investment fund between Oman Investment Authority and the Turkish Army’s pensions fund Oyak, signed agreements to acquire stakes in Turkey’s mining company Samas and autonomous defense outfit Tekatron.

#1- The defense play: The OIA officially entered the advanced defense systems space through the offtake of a stake in the Ankara-based Tekatron, which specializes in the design and manufacture of unmanned ground military vehicles (UGVs). The deal is set to give Omani capital a stake in tech critical for border security and surveillance — with the possibility of localization in the Sultanate down the line.

#2- The supply chain angle: The acquisition of a stake in Samas Mining targets a high-value input in many industries: Naturally occurring sodium bentonite. Samad operates the Tokat deposit, reportedly one of the only two remaining deposits of its kind globally. The investment will help Samas scale its annual production from 160k tonnes to over 300k tonnes. Oman is also set to get priority access to the material to support its domestic industrial sector.

SOUND SMART- Sodium bentonite is essentially a type of clay formed by ancient volcanic ash. The clay has multi-industry uses due to its incredible swelling capacity (up to 15-20 times its dry volume) and non-toxic nature, making it an efficient insulator and binder that is used in industries spanning construction, water management, oil and gas drilling, nanotechnology, and cosmetics. The material is sometimes produced through the processing of the more naturally abundant calcium Bentonite.

The transactions mark the first investments we know of by the joint Turkish-Omani fund since its creation in late 2024. The fund’s setup is also part of Oman’s playbook — the OIA is increasingly using 50-50 investment funds in partnership with local heavyweights as its primary vehicle for expanding investments abroad. Other similar 50-50 arrangements include a USD 200 mn joint fund with Azerbaijan Investment Holding in 2025, another USD 200 mn fund with the Uzbek Reconstruction and Development Fund, and two funds with Spain’s sovereign wealth fund Cofides.

Against the odds

Aramco’s 1Q earnings are the latest thing that makes us think our thesis is correct: We’re heading into a golden age for MENA+ infrastructure that we think will be marked by massive spend to “harden all the things” while building in redundancies to redundancies. We also have some IPO news for you this fine morning — and we’re nowhere near as bullish as some on Saudi’s debt market getting an uplift from passive flows.

UP FIRST- Aramco’s East-West pipeline did what it was built for. The state oil giant’s 1Q net income climbed 25% y-o-y to USD 32.5 bn as the bypass routed more than 7 mn bbl / d around Hormuz — 5 mn for export, 2 mn into domestic refineries — and stronger global crude and refining margins offset the export drag. The pipeline “has proven itself to be a critical supply artery, helping to mitigate the impact of a global energy shock and providing relief to customers affected by shipping constraints,” CEO Amin Nasser said in the earnings statement (pdf).

Aramco isn’t pulling back on the divvy, staying on course at USD 21.9 bn for the quarter (and USD 87.6 bn for the full year).

Nasser paired the results with a warning. He told Bloomberg some 1 bn barrels of supply have already been lost from global markets in the past two months, and that the market normalizes “only in 2027” if shipping stays curtailed more than a few weeks.

Watch this space: Aramco’s earnings call is today. We’ll be listening to see if there’s color worth reporting back in Wednesday’s issue.

From The Dept. of Talking One’s Book: Saudi bonds are due some USD 10 bn in passive inflows next year, Tadawul boss Mohammed Alrumaih told Bloomberg. The trigger: SAR-denominated sovereign sukuk are set to join JPMorgan’s Emerging Markets Government Bonds Index and Bloomberg’s EM Local Currency Government Index from 29 January 2027. Eight Saudi sovereign sukuk totaling nearly USD 69 bn already meet the inclusion criteria. The sukuk will ultimately account for 2.5% of EMGBI. For context: foreign investors hold just 8% of local government bond issuances today, with only USD 3 bn traded OTC in 1Q.

Our take: Active fund managers aren’t going to suddenly pile into KSA. The equity-market experience in Saudi has been that index inclusion brings the passive money but does not necessarily pull active foreign capital in behind it. Tadawul remains dominated by domestic retail and domestic institutions, with active foreign participation thinner than the FTSE and MSCI inclusion stories suggested it would be. There’s no obvious reason to think the bond version of the trade plays out differently. The USD 10 bn will come — it’ll just be exactly the size of the index allocation, no more.

Saudi delivery app Ninja is lining up advisors for a USD 1 bn Tadawul IPO in late 2026 or early 2027, Bloomberg reports, citing sources it says are in the know. The company has tapped Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Riyad Capital, and UBS to advise, though a private funding round is still on the table as a fallback. Ninja has been exploring IPO options since March — executives met London investors around then as part of early soundings — with Tadawul preferred over overseas exchanges like the NYSE.

Tadawul has held up through the geopolitical noise, making it the steadier exit for deals that need to clear in the next 18 months. The Saudi IPO pipeline keeps moving while broader Gulf listings slow: Dar Al Balad broke the post-war drought at USD 55 mn, and Mutlaq Al Ghowairi Contracting and Arabian Dyar are still racing late-June CMA expiries.

Speaking of Dar Al Balad… Retail investors have until 14 May to get orders in as the company offers 30% of its shares at SAR 9.75 apiece, the top of the range. The institutional book cleared at a final size of SAR 205 mn (USD 55 mn), valuing the company at SAR 682 mn (USD 182 mn). That’s smaller than the Ninja figure, sure, but the symbolic weight is bigger — this is the first IPO out the gate since the war broke regional capital markets in February.

MEANWHILE- Egypt’s Al Ahly Sabbour is hitting the brakes on its planned EGX debut until the war resolves. A public listing has been in the pipeline since 2017 — the developer is split 60% Sabbour family, 40% National Bank of Egypt. It said last year it was in the final stages of selecting an IPO advisor by June 2025.

The World Bank greenlit USD 1 bn in concessional financing for Egypt under the second phase of its Growth Development Policy Financing program — USD 800 mn from the bank, USD 200 mn as a UK credit guarantee — bumped from a planned USD 500 mn. The increase came “given the uncertainty in the region and the shock facing Egypt,” Country Director Stephane Guimbert told our Egypt desk.

Sound smart: Unlike project lending, DPF flows straight into the state budget once agreed reforms are taken care of. This tranche covers governance of state-owned enterprises, domestic debt market efficiency, fair competition rules, and welfare reforms.

Global commodities giant Trafigura is going upstream in Egypt aluminum. The commodities trader signed a term sheet to take a minority stake in a new project company with Metallurgical Industries Holding and Egyptalum, funding a USD 750-900 mn doubling of the Naga Hammadi complex to 600k tpa via a 300k tpa primary smelter and a 150k tpa anode plant. Trafigura comes in across the stack: minority equity, debt provider, long-term offtake, and alumina-feedstock supplier — the full-spectrum trader play.

Why it matters: Egypt currently imports all its alumina, so the agreement locks in 25-year supply at a moment when the International Aluminium Institute projects 40% demand growth by 2030, with EVs alone accounting for 63% of the increase. Our friends at EFG Hermes were sole financial advisor.

Bahrain’s aluminum champion also has eyes on Egypt. Back in September, MIH and Egyptalum signed a non-binding MoU with Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) to study a USD 3 bn alumina refinery with a target capacity of around 2 mn tpa. The fate of the project remains unclear in view of both Bahrain’s financial distress and the ongoing war in the Gulf.

Also worth knowing this morning-

Aldar Properties sits inside a record year for hybrid bonds, with the Abu Dhabi developer having printed two hybrid issuances so far in 2026. Hybrids — instruments rating agencies count partly as debt and partly as equity, letting issuers raise capital without spiking leverage ratios — have sold a record USD 65 bn globally YTD, with spreads at all-time lows of 58 bps in March, per Bloomberg data.

Cairo-based Beltone Venture Capital and Citadel International Holdings cashed out of Egyptian last-mile logistics player Bosta at a 75% IRR — buyer and valuation undisclosed, per the Beltone release (pdf). Bosta is preparing a USD 170 mn EGX listing later this year, so the open question is whether the undisclosed buyer is positioning ahead of the float or transacting a clean pre-IPO secondary.

The National Bank of Egypt bought a 20% stake in Scatec‘s USD 600 mn Obelisk solar-plus-storage project in Nagaa Hammadi, joining Norfund and EDF Power Solutions at the operating-company level at 20% each, per the Scatec statement. For NBE, the swap from debt provider to equity owner in the renewables stack is the move worth watching. Matouk Bassiouny & Hennawy advised.

Market Snapshot

Tadawul 0.76% • ADX -0.37% • DFM -0.50% • EGX30 1.91%

Brent USD 105.06 / bbl • Gold USD 4,529 / oz • USD / SAR 3.75 • USD / EGP 52.50

Last minute

Last-minute extension for DP World’s Thai port concession

DP World’s Laem Chabang International Terminal (LCIT) secured a five-year extension to operate the B5 container berth at Thailand’s largest container hub, Laem Chabang Port — extending the concession from this month through April 2031, according to a statement.

Why this matters: Intra-Asia shipping has become one of the most contested container markets. Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia are now pushing port upgrades to handle bigger vessels and rising cargo volumes, positioning Laem Chabang’s next phase — and DP World’s renewed berth position — within a wider regional upgrade cycle. Laem Chabang’s next phase is designed to increase the port’s container capacity to 18 mn TEUs annually from 11 mn TEUs.

The Laem Chabang extension fits a wider DP World push across Southeast Asian gateways. In Indonesia, the port operator is expanding Belawan New Container Terminal to 1.4 mn TEUs and building a new 3 mn TEU terminal with Maspion Group in East Java, alongside an industrial and logistics park. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, DP World operates Saigon Premier Container Terminal and has added a domestic coastal logistics service with VIMC Lines, tying port capacity more directly to manufacturing zones.

Levant gas exchange to get an Egypt-backed facelift

Egyptian-Jordanian JV Technical Gas Services (TGS) issteppingin to overhaul the Lebanese segment of the Arab Gas Pipeline. Under the agreement, TGS will repair around 30 km of 24-inch pipe and upgrade metering stations and power plant connections.

Why it matters: This is the technical follow-through needed to make good on Egyptian and Jordanian pledges to supply Lebanon’s Deir Ammar Power Plant with natural gas. While both countries had started pumping gas to Lebanon and Syria back in January, the aging Lebanese domestic network has slowed down distribution. Deploying TGS to modernize these lines ensures the local infrastructure can handle the flows needed to stabilize the country’s energy supply.

Formalizing what we already know: This comes after Lebanon signed an agreement with Syria and Jordan to pool natural gas resources last week. The agreement adds to a broad energy collaboration framework emerging between Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Under this arrangement, Jordan and Egypt receive and regasify LNG shipments using their co-rented floating storage and regasification unit — the Energos Force, currently docked at Jordan’s Aqaba Port — before pushing the natural gas north through to Syria and Lebanon via the Arab Gas Pipeline. Israeli gas heading to Jordanian and Egyptian markets could also be part of the mix flowing to Syria and Lebanon, our Logistics desk previously reported.

MEANWHILE- Jordan secures back-up regasification capacity: Jordan’s National Electric Power Company signed an agreement with the US LNG infrastructure firm Excelerate Energy to lease a floating storage and regasification unit for the Sheikh Sabah LNG Terminal in Aqaba. The agreement comes before the Energos Force rental expires at the end of next month.

The leased unit is meant to keep Aqaba running until Jordan completes its planned onshore regasification unit, which is designed to improve the efficiency and reliability of the country’s gas import infrastructure.

Going all in

Watch this space

Global energy giants committed to spending USD 19 bn on exploration, drilling, and production in petroleum projects in Egypt over the next three years, according to a statement from Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly. The pledges come as Egypt’s government has a strict mandate to clear international oil companies’ arrears by next month, after cutting down its arrears to USD 714 mn from USD 6.1 bn previously

Who’s writing the checks? Italy’s Eni is leading the pack with a USD 8 bn commitment, followed by BP (USD 5 bn), the US’ Apache (USD 4 bn), and the UAE’s Archios (USD 2 bn).

Armed clashes force temporary shutdown of Libya’s main refinery: Libya’s largest oil refinery in the city of Zawiya (40 km west of Tripoli) resumed operations yesterday after a two-day shutdown following armed clashes in its vicinity. The clashes in the area saw projectiles land in the complex, leaving some minor damage and prompting the Azzawiya Oil Refining Company to evacuate personnel and tankers from the region.

The clashes are yet another reminder of the fragile security situation in Libya, but do not constitute a serious major escalation in conflict between the country’s main competing camps, as they were primarily between local players. Libya is a net importer of refined petroleum products, and a shutdown of some of the few functioning refineries in the country traditionally weighs heavily on local market supplies.

Sign of the times

Emirati logistics giant DP World is rolling out ins. coverage for cargo traveling through regional trade routes, with the firm saying in a statement that coverage will be available across multi-modal options, and unlike other policies, which leave gaps for storage and inland transport operations, will cover the whole supply chain operation. The policy covers damage and physical losses caused by war-linked events, and coverage limits of USD 400 mn for shipping and USD 1 mn for inland operations.

This is the UAE taking matters into its own hands to help encourage global logistics firms to continue to operate in the region. Standard commercial ins. policies often have war exclusion clauses that mean coverage can be canceled with just seven days' notice. DP World is providing a safety net that allows trade to continue even when geopolitical tensions rise.

Wynn Resorts’ CEO Craig Billings confirmed that the launch of its USD 5.1 bn Wynn Al Marjan Island project in Ras Al Khaimah will be pushed back from its original early 2027 opening timeline. Speaking during the firm’s 1Q 2026 earnings call, Billings described the shift as a “modest delay” following logistics disruptions and shipping constraints on the back of the regional war, but stopped short of specifying a new opening date. Tensions had forced rerouting of materials and alternative sourcing, which he said has added to costs.

ICYMI- Rival MGM Resorts’ Dubai mega-project is still on track for a 3Q 2027 opening, despite MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle saying visitor activity to the region was likely to dip around 15%.

CALENDAR

May 2026

21 May — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

25 May — Independence Day (public holiday, markets closed). Jordan

27-30 May — Eid Al Adha (public holiday, markets closed). Region-wide

28 May — Saudi Aramco ex-dividend date. Saudi Arabia

June 2026

7 June — OPEC+ ministerial meeting. Vienna/Virtual

9 June — King Abdullah II Accession Day (public holiday, markets closed). Jordan

10–14 June — Syria Buildex International Construction Exhibition. Syria

16-17 June — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

July 2026

2 July — Parliamentary elections. Algeria

5 July — Independence Day (public holiday, markets closed). Algeria

9 July — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

14 July — Republic Day (public holiday, markets closed). Iraq

23 July — Revolution Day (public holiday, markets closed). Egypt

25 July — Republic Day (public holiday, markets closed). Tunisia

28-29 July — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

30 July — Throne Day (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

August 2026

13 Aug — Women’s National Day. Tunisia

20 Aug — Revolution of the King and the People Day (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

20 Aug — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

21 Aug — Youth Day (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

25 Aug — Prophet’s Birthday (public holiday, markets closed) — TBD. Region-wide

31 Aug-3 Sep — LEAP technology conference. Saudi Arabia

September 2026

7-9 Sep — AIM Congress. UAE

15-16 Sep — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

15 Sep — IMF’s eighth review of Egypt’s USD 8 bn EFF arrangement. Egypt

16-17 Sep — Middle East Banking Innovation Summit. UAE

23 Sep — National Day (public holiday, markets closed). Saudi Arabia

24 Sep — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

30 Sep-3 Oct — Cityscape Egypt 2026. Egypt

October 2026

3 Oct — National Day (public holiday, markets closed). Iraq

6 Oct — Armed Forces Day (public holiday, markets closed). Egypt

15 Oct — GCC Made in the Gulf Forum + Exhibition. TBD

25 Oct — Liberation Day (public holiday, markets closed). Libya

25-27 Oct — World Investment Forum 2026. Qatar

26-29 Oct — Future Investment Initiative. Saudi Arabia

27-28 Oct — US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting.

29 Oct — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

November 2026

1 Nov — Revolution Anniversary (public holiday, markets closed). Algeria

2 Nov — Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition + Conference (ADIPEC) opens (through 5 Nov). UAE

6 Nov — Green March Anniversary (public holiday, markets closed). Morocco

16 Nov — Cityscape Global begins (through 19 Nov). Saudi Arabia

December 2026

17 Dec — Central Bank of Egypt monetary policy decision. Egypt

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Bollywood and tech

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