More on the state’s plan to overhaul spinning and weaving: The Public Enterprises Ministry’s bid to streamline state-owned spinning and weaving companies is targeting a significant increase in production, Minister Hisham Tawfik told cabinet in his latest review of the plan. The EGP 21 bn plan could see the yearly output of state ginning factories more than doubled to 4 mn qintars and spinning mills and textile plants more than quadrupled to 188k and 199k cubic meters. Under the ongoing plan, nine spinning and weaving companies will be merged into one mega-entity with seven ginning facilities under the ministry’s purview, and about 23 others consolidated into nine, Tawfik recently said.

The plan is part of efforts to boost the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This involves reducing the number of SOEs and streamlining their financial performance. Public sector reform has been one of the key conditions of the latest loan Egypt received from the IMF under its USD 5.2 bn standby facility.

Other things we’re keeping an eye on this morning:

• Sharm El Sheikh International Airport has received its first direct flight from Estonia in more than a year, the local press reports, citing the addition of a weekly flight on this route until winter ends.
• Natural gas at Sinai plants: Some factories in South Sinai will start using compressed natural gas as an alternative to diesel fuel as part of the state’s drive to promote natgas as a source of energy. Those factories are located in a remote industrial zone in Abu Zenima and don’t have access to the national natgas grid.
• Al Ahly Sabbour and the UAE’s Eltizam Asset Management Group signed an agreement to create two companies — Tafawuq Egypt and Three60 Egypt — to manage four real estate projects worth EGP 2 bn.
• The Ghabbour Development Foundation is setting up two applied tech institutes in 15 May and 6th of October cities under an MoU signed with the Education Ministry.