The talking heads had plenty to mull yesterday thanks to an active news cycle, but no single story dominated the conversation.

The IMF’s upwards revision of its forecast for Egypt’s GDP growth in the World Economic Outlook, which was released yesterday, earned airtime on Kelma Akhira (watch, runtime: 1:42) and Masaa DMC (watch, runtime: 2:30). We have chapter and verse on the report in this morning’s Speed Round, below.

Egypt being the Middle Eastern economy whose economy will grow this year was a focal point of International Cooperation Minister Rania Al Mashat’s speech at the G24 Ministers and Governors Meeting yesterday during the IMF and World Bank’s annual meetings. Our ability to eke out growth is largely thanks to large-scale infrastructure projects, including those with private sector participation, in electricity, renewable energy, water desalination, and social housing, Al Mashat told Yahduth fi Misr’s Sherif Amer. Meanwhile, on the funding side, Al Mashat called on international institutions to diversify their financing tools to give countries the support they need to recover from the pandemic (watch, runtime: 13:23). We also have more on Al Mashat’s participation in yesterday’s meeting in this morning’s Speed Round, below.

On the covid-19 front, Kelma Akhira’s Lamees El Hadidi took note of Health Minister Hala Zayed saying yesterday that Egypt will not return to a lockdown if cases begin to spike again (watch, runtime: 2:02). We have more on the story and Zayed’s other remarks at the WHO Regional Committee meeting for the Eastern Mediterranean Region in What We’re Tracking Today, above.

We still don’t have an ETA for the Chinese-developed vaccine, which is currently in phase three clinical trials in Egypt, advisor to the Health Minister Noha Assem told Lamees (watch, runtime: 7:33). Once the trials are complete, Egypt plans to begin producing the vaccine as soon as the full trials are complete and the vaccine is proven effective, Assem said (watch, runtime: 1:45).