Selling fresh eurobonds aren’t in the cards yet – Egypt FinMin

Egypt does not have any immediate plans to take a $7 billion eurobond sale to market in the first half of 2021, its Finance Minister Mohamed Maait told Kelma Akhira’s Lamees El Hadidi yesterday (watch, runtime: 3:17).

Maait denied an earlier report from Asharq Bloomberg suggesting that Egypt is actively moving towards a sale, explaining to Lamees that the state budget gives the Finance Ministry the licence to borrow up to $7 billion through debt instruments in the international market.

Whether or not the ministry decides to issue that amount of international debt — or any debt at all, for that matter — depends entirely on the circumstances as the financial year progresses, Maait explained.

Also, not in the cards right now: Egypt’s planned sale of Samurai and Panda bonds, which the government is pushing to the financial year 2021-2022 because of complications caused by covid-19,  Maait told local press.

Egyptian government has been mulling the yen- and yuan-denominated bonds since 2018, and said last year that it would issue the bonds in the first quarter of 2020 but postponed the issuance. Marketing foreign bonds in Asian markets requires more complicated clearance procedures such as new ratings assessments by Asian ratings agencies.