Browsing: Egypt

Egypt's inflation rate jumps by 0.1% in January

Egypt’s annual urban consumer inflation rose to 7.2 per cent in January from 7.1 per cent in December, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) said.

From December, it announced that month on month urban headline inflation stood at 0.7 per cent adding that Inflation remains within Egypt’s Central Bank of a target range of 9 per cent, plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The CBE announced that Egypt’s core inflation increased to 2.7% in January from 2.4% in December. Consumer prices decreased to 0.2% in December after decreasing to 0.3% in November.

Also Read: Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan set for Blue Nile dam agreement this January

Since August in December 2019, Egypt’s annual consumer price inflation rate recorded its highest rate rising to 7.1 per cent from 3.6 per cent in November.

According to Trading Economics data, prices rebounded for food & non-alcoholic beverages decreased to 1.8 …

South Africa downranked as investment destination

South Africa has fallen to third place due to its constrained economic growth according to RMB’s “2020 Where to Invest in Africa” report.

But the country still holds its place as Africa’s bastion of a well-developed financial and capital market.
The report said the JSE remained Africa’s most liquid stock exchange with an excess of $1.4 billion traded daily. Which is much higher than Egypt’s Cairo Stock Exchange which trades $44 million a day.

According to RMB report, South Africa also ranked highly on other financial market depth measures such as private credit as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), showing that consumers have access to a wider range of financial instruments compared to other African countries.

The report showed, however, South Africa’s ease of doing business ranking in the last few years has slipped but it remains one of the top ten easiest operating environments in Africa.

Also

African Development Bank approves $22m to Egypt

African Development Bank (AfDB) approved a $22 million Senior Loan to help corporate leasing company (Corplease) expand its lending to SMEs in Egypt.

The decision signalled confidence in the growing local market and in Egypt’s economy as a whole.
Out of the $22 million, African Development Bank will mobilize $7 million from the Africa Growing Together Fund (AGTF), a co-financing fund, established with the People’s Bank of China.

Corplease is a leading non-bank financial institution that provides diverse leasing products and services to SMEs and larger corporates, through sale, direct leasing and leaseback, as well as structured finance products. to address funding constraints in the private sector in Egypt, corp lease seeks to provide alternative financing through leases.

Also Read: African Development Bank $1m grant to Burundi

“The need for leasing products in Egypt is growing consistently on an annual basis to meet the acute demand by small, medium and …

Egypt among top 10 emerging economies

Egypt is among the top ten emerging economies worldwide, Egypt’s Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala Al-Saeed said on the sidelines of the UK-Africa Investment Summit 2020 in London.

Saeed claimed that now is the best time to invest in Egypt, adding that the economic reforms undertaken by the Egyptian government are what helped the country to make the list of the world’s top-ten emerging economies.

She explained that Egypt has a very large market, with 60 per cent being the youth and the whole world is looking at investment in human capital.

Saeed added that Egypt has embarked on a wide range of reforms to invest in infrastructure, such as the development of the road network and the energy and electricity sectors, as well as the development of Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone).

Also Read: Italy funds agri-business development in Egypt and Iran

“The Suez Canal economic zone …

Israel starts exporting natural gas to Egypt

Israel began exporting natural gas to Egypt on Wednesday being one of the most important deals the countries have been signed since they made peace decades ago.

Dolphinus Holdings, a private firm in Egypt will purchase 85 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas, worth an estimated $19.5 billion, from Israel’s Leviathan and Tamar offshore fields over 15 years.

Yossi Abu, CEO of Israel’s Delek Drilling, one of the partners in Leviathan and Tamar, said the landmark arrangement “marks a new era in the Middle East energy sector.”

two Egyptian industry sources said that Israel will initially export 200 million cubic feet of gas per day to Egypt,
According to Delek, by the second half of 2022 gas from Leviathon will be supplied to Dolphinus at a rate of 2.1 billion cubic meters per year, increasing to 4.7 billion cubic meters per year.

Also Read:Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan set for

UK to provide £25m to boost Egypt's economic development

The United Kingdom and Egypt announced the establishment of an economic partnership to implement Egypt’s Vision 2030 initiative.

Egypt and the United Kingdom are seeking to improve education and health care as well as promote trade and investment.

According to the partnership, the UK announced it would provide Egypt with £13 million to help accomplish comprehensive economic growth, empower youth, social development, support the neediest groups and develop the business environment.

Also within the framework of this partnership, to support financial inclusion, the Uk will grant Egypt £3 million and about £8 million to increase employment opportunities for young people through developing capacity building programs and supporting the development of the higher education system.

Also Read: UK-Africa Investment Summit 2020

The statement also said that the two countries will work together to prepare technical studies and feasibility studies to implement a number of sustainable infrastructure projects to increase private sector …

Orange Egypt to build new data centre in Cairo

Orange Egypt signed an agreement with the Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD) to build and operate the new administrative capital’s data centre and cloud computing platform.

The data centre is an infrastructure milestone that seeks to establish the concept of the ‘smart capital’ and is considered to be one of the key technological hubs in Egypt and in Africa.

Orange Egypt was awarded the contract to build and operate the data centre according to the latest international standards based on ACUD’s multinational expertise in providing innovative technologies and solutions in collaboration with key international players in the ICT sector.

Also Read: ENGIE to run Orange Group’s mega West Africa data center

Orange Egypt will provide the main infrastructure to establish and operate the data centre, according to the agreement. This will allow the Administrative Capital to exploit smart technologies to provide various services including providing IoT solutions, cloud computing, …

The giant hydropower dam on the Blue Nile (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam-GERD) agreement is set to be finalized later this month in Washington-USA by ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, who came to an agreement on Wednesday, Reuters reveals.

The hydropower project caused a rather serious diplomatic crisis between Cairo (of which relies on the river for its freshwater supply) and Addis Ababa.

According to Reuters, the ministers agreed to fill the $4 billion project in stages during the wet season, taking into account the impact on downstream reservoirs, the U.S. Treasury Department, which hosted the meeting, said in a joint statement with the countries and the World Bank.

Further, the statement highlighted that the initial filling of the dam set to commence in July will aim for a level of 595 meters above sea level and early electricity generation while providing appropriate mitigation measures for Egypt and Sudan during …

The world top-notch technology firm Microsoft and African Development Bank (AfDB) have launched the digital training platform for African youth, named –Coding for Employment.

The platform is expected to provide digital skills to youth.

According to the a statement from the AfDB, the platform was launched during the 2019 African Economic Conference in Sharm El Sheikh- Egypt, with the sole aim of promoting a continuous learning culture among young people and build their capacity to share the future of the continent.

Africa has nearly 420 million youth, which almost one-third of them are unemployed and 10 to 12 million youth enter the workforce every year to find only 3.1 million jobs created, hence—AfDB data show that, by 2050 youth in Africa will double to 830 million.

The African Development Bank Group is Africa’s premier development finance institution, with a rather strong foothold in supporting African nation’s development initiatives. It …

Egypt is Germany’s third-largest trade partner - The Exchange

Egypt is Germany’s third-largest trade partner in the Middle East, with a trade exchange worth $3.6 billion.

According to a report by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, trade between the two countries increased by $43 million during the first nine months of 2019 to $3.622 billion, compared to about $3.579 billion recorded during the same period in 2018.

In 2017, the trade exchange between Egypt and Germany reached its highest level at 5.8 billion euros.

Germany’s total investment in Egypt currently stands at about $7.4 billion across various fields, including construction, industry, tourism, the service sector, agriculture, and information and technology.

In German investment guarantees, Egypt also ranks among the top ten recipients with 18 guarantees worth 1.4 billion euros.

During Mostafa Madbouly, Egyp’st Prime Minister visit to Germany last June, he signed a memorandum of understanding with Bosch to build a factory in an area of 120,000 square …