Minister: Egypt to return to international bond market in H1 2016

Egypt is to return to the international bond market in the first half of 2016, the country’s finance minister said Monday, taking advantage of its return to economic and political stability in the wake of the Arab Spring uprising of 2011.

“We will go out to the international bond market in the second half of the financial year 2015-16, God willing,” Hany Qadry Dimian told Reuters on the sidelines of a Euromoney conference. Egypt’s financial year runs from July to June.

The government conducted its first international bond sale in five years in June, selling $1.5 billion of 10-year bonds at a yield of 6 percent after receiving more than $4.5 billion in investor orders.

Foreign portfolio investors left the country en masse in 2011, freezing it out of the international debt market after an uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

But economic growth has begun to pick up and state finances have strengthened since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took office last year.

He has overseen the launch of economic reforms and forged an alliance with rich Gulf Arab states to obtain aid and investment.