PM — Get inked to track your vitals

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We told you this morning to expect another busy news day, and so far it appears that our crystal balls were quite accurate.

THE BIG STORIES TODAY

PMI rises, but we’re still in contraction territory: Activity in Egypt’s non-oil private sector improved at the fastly monthly pace in July, but remained in contraction territory, according to S&P Global’s purchasing managers’ index (pdf). Our PMI reading rose to 46.4 last month, up from 45.2 in June — which had been the worst reading in two years — as employment stabilized, inflation softened, and the rate of decline of output and new orders also decelerated.

Chimera Investments is getting c.56% of Beltone Financial, after the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm’s mandatory tender offer (MTO) for Beltone closed today. Orascom Financial Holding agreed last week to sell its entire 56% stake in the financial services firm, which automatically cleared Chimera’s takeover bid by surpassing the 51% threshold needed for the transaction to go through.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD

The global business press is still all about US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan this afternoon. Pelosi showered Taiwan with praise and vowed the US’ commitment to defending democracy in Taiwan, which pundits are concerned will lead China — which claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island — to retaliate. The story is emblazoned on the front pages of the Financial Times, Reuters, CNBC, and the Wall Street Journal.

THIS JUST IN- OPEC+ is raising oil output — but just barely: OPEC+ decided to add a “minuscule” 100k barrels per day to its oil production in September, the group decided at its meeting today, Bloomberg reports. The smaller-than-anticipated production hike comes after the West, including US President Joe Biden, has been pushing the Saudi Arabia-led group to ramp up its output to help cool down global oil prices, which have remained above USD 100 / bbl for months.

HAPPENING NOW-

The board of trustees overseeing preparations for the National Dialogue is currently meeting to discuss the economic agenda. Need a refresher on the national dialogue? We’ve got you covered.

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** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

• Cement production quotas are sticking around for another year: The Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) has heeded cement companies’ calls to leave cement production curbs in place for another year — but will allow output to rise as demand picks up.
• NUCA wants to break its securitization record: The New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) is seeking regulatory approval for a record-breaking EGP 20 bn securitized bond issuance.
• One of the world’s largest glass companies could be coming to Egypt: Mexican glass manufacturer Vitro plans to expand to Egypt and invest USD 400 mn to build two factories.

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One step closer to gov’t EV charging station company: Qualifying bidders looking to manage and operate a soon-to-be-established state company for electric vehicle charging stations have until Wednesday 31 August to submit their offers, according to a Public Enterprise Ministry statement (pdf).

We’re on the lookout for a number of key macro figures this week and next:

• Foreign reserves figures for July will likely be released at the end of this week or the beginning of the next;
• Inflation data for July will land on Wednesday, 10 August.

The Central Bank of Egypt will meet to discuss interest rates on Thursday, 18 August.

PSA- Startups have until Wednesday, 31 August to apply for the fall 2022 cycle of EGBank’s Mint Incubator. The incubator, backed by Cairo Angels offers a three-month program for startups with existing products. Startups can apply for the program here.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- It’s going to be a scorcher: Expect temperatures to rise to 40°C during the day tomorrow before falling to 24°C at night, our favorite weather app tells us.

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We know disposable tech hurts our wallets — but there’s also a significant environmental impact there, too: Many devices that we have come to rely on as a crucial part of daily life are all designed to give out on us 3-4 years after their purchase, making them a drain on our expenses and a contributor to the climate crisis. “Buying gear with batteries sealed inside is kind of like buying a car where you can’t change the tires. We just don’t realize we’re doing it, or how it’s contributing to our climate and sustainability crises,” tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler writes for the Washington Post. The two biggest environmental issues in the gadget space is how they’re manufactured and how we dispose of them, both of which result in significant carbon emissions.

Part of the solution: Shifting to products that have batteries that consumers can change and continue to get use out of the product, Fowler says. However, he warns that this shift is not necessarily a simple one, considering tech companies refuse to come clean with their battery information, with only three big players — Nintendo, VanMoof and Apple — disclosing this information on their websites.

The new excuse to get a tattoo: “I’m keeping track of my vitals.” South Korean scientists are developing a nanotech tattoo ink that serves as a health monitoring device, according to Reuters. A science team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon have developed a tattoo ink, manufactured from liquid metal and carbon nanotubes, that serves as a bioelectrode. The tattoo, when attached to an ECG device, can provide your heart rate and other vital signs. “In the future, what we hope to do is connect a wireless chip integrated with this ink, so that we can communicate, or we can send signals back and forth between our body to an external device,” said Steve Park, a materials science and engineering professor who leads the project.

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An entertaining thriller surrounding a crumbling marriage: Hulu’s Deep Water follows a couple who have fallen out of love but are supposedly content with their open marriage arrangement: Vic Van Allen (Ben Affleck), a well-off tech who retired early and chose to be a house husband and his freespirited wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas) who is more occupied with her flings and flirtations. Vic seems fine with Melinda’s entanglements, turning a blind eye in the dysfunctional and toxic marriage to avoid a divorce and care for their daughter, Trixie. But trouble soon emerges, as Vic’s slow-growing discontent soon makes him the prime suspect in the disappearance of one of Melinda’s lovers. The movie is directed by legendary British director Adrian Lyne, best known for iconic movies Indecent Proposal and Fatal Attraction, who returned to the big screen after a 20-year hiatus. You can stream Deep Water on OSN+ or catch the trailer here (watch runtime: 2:02).

Ironically, Affleck and de Armas had their own love story during the movie’s production, before breaking up a year after De Armas recently revealed that growing attention of their relationship made her “anxious”, pushing her to call it quits.

⚽ Egypt’s Red Devils try to save face: Third-place Al Ahly will host Pharco in the Egyptian Premier League at 9pm, as it tries to close the gap with second-place Pyramids FC to one point under efforts to chase for the title of the league. Al Ahly’s cabinet has been league trophy-less since season 2019/2020.

The last of 2022 Arab Cup U-20 goes underway: Egypt will play against Algeria in the semi-finals today at 8pm. Saudi Arabia v Palestine are on the pitch as we dispatch.

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Jordanian indie band Autostrad is taking over Cairo Jazz 610’s stage tonight to perform a fusion of rock, reggae, latin, and funk music. Meshwar will get the night started at 9pm.

It’s 90s night at Cairo Jazz Club — Shereet Cockatil ft. Anis are performing Arabic and English pop hits from the 90s and the 80s at 8 pm.

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Forget about the 1% — Plutocrats takes on the 0.1% that have amassed exorbitant fortunes (in 2019 they owned nearly 20% of the US’ wealth), and have widened the wealth gap, deepening economic inequality. Financial journalist-turned-politician Chrystia Freeland conducts interviews with plutocrats to look at the consequences of concentrating the world’s wealth into such a small number of hands. She dives deep into the history of super-elitism, drawing comparisons between the current period and other periods with great income disparity such as the Gilded Age, which brought enormous wealth to business men like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. The b’naires of today, unlike their historical counterparts, are mostly self-made, but largely impervious to the details of economic and political forces that led to their successes, instead owing it to their hard work, she argues. Freeland is able to remain politically neutral in delivering a compelling and well-researched examination of inequality.

EARNINGS WATCH-

Credit Agricole Egypt’s net income after tax rose 32.4% y-o-y in 1H 2022, recording EGP 1.02 bn, according to its financial statement (pdf). The bank’s net interest income rose 13.6% y-o-y to EGP 1.64 bn during the quarter.

EDITOR’S NOTE- This story was corrected on 9 August, 2022 to reflect that these earnings are for 1H 2022, not 2Q 2022.

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MARKET ROUNDUP-

The EGX30 rose 1.0% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 440.15 mn (45.7% below the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net sellers. The index is down 20.2% YTD.

In the green: Fawry (+4.1%), e-Finance (+4.0%) and Rameda (+3.3%).

In the red: Eastern Company (-2.6%), EKH-EGP (-1.9%) and AMOC (-0.5%).

The world is lagging behind in its commitment to sustainable development goals. The world is struggling to make headway fulfilling the sustainable development goals agreed to by UN member states in 2015, and in the past two years progress has gone into reverse as health and security emergencies weigh on developing countries, according to Cambridge University’s 2022 Sustainable Development Report (pdf). The covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and this year the war in Ukraine have diverted attention away from climate targets and SDGs, a shift which the report says both slows national plans to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and cuts the amount of finance available.

Where we stand: Egypt sits in the bottom half of the report’s SDG index, which measures countries’ progress in meeting their SDG targets. With a score of 68.7, Egypt ranks 87th out of 163 countries assessed by the report — just above the regional average of 66.7. That puts Egypt below the likes of the UAE, Jordan, Oman and Tunisia and above countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Kuwait.

The good news first: Egypt is making progress in most of its most pressing SDG categories. The report says that Egypt has made moderate steps to reduce hunger, improve health and wellbeing, protect the terrestrial environment and increase economic growth and job opportunities.

It’s on track to meet others: Egypt is either meeting or on track to achieve SDGs relating to climate goals, reducing inequality, improving access to clean water and promoting sustainable consumption, the report says.

Progress for other SDGs is stagnating or going into reverse: The report marks Egypt down on a number of key measures, including rising poverty, the small share of renewables in the country’s energy mix, the low amount of government spending on health and education, and increasing threats to marine biodiversity.

The devil is in the details: Even within the categories where Egypt is making headway, there are aspects that aren’t being addressed, weighing on our overall progress. In the Zero Hunger goal, for example, Egypt is marked down for not making progress on tackling obesity.

Achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals is fundamentally a question of investment in physical infrastructure, renewable energy and human capital, the report says. It is precisely these global disruptions that have contributed to a slowdown in financing, especially among poor and middle income countries who lack reasonable financing mechanisms to implement projects that would help make these goals a reality. “The key to achieving the SDGs, besides preserving peace and lowering geopolitical tensions, is having a plan to finance them,” according to the report.

To reverse this trend, rich countries need to crank up their financing of sustainable projects: G20 countries need to commit more financing for developing countries to put projects in action that can boost economic development and eventually meet these 2030 targets. Multilateral development banks will also need capacity increases from rich countries “through paid in capital” and “greater leverage of their balance sheets,” the report says. Debt refinancing, official development assistance and a reconsideration of debt sustainability on the part of lending institutions like the IMF. On the other end, developing countries should work on better debt management and creditworthiness through tax policy reform,export policy reform and better liquidity management, the report says.

And that’s going to require a more targeted approach to investment: Key areas the report has identified as being crucial to the successful achievement of SDGs by 2030 include spending on education and social protection, healthcare systems, renewable energy, sustainable food production, sustainable urban infrastructure and universal digital services. To do this rich countries might opt for increasing domestic tax revenues through progressive taxation, borrowing more from multilateral development banks, restructuring debt and engaging in sovereign borrowing on international capital markets.