Naguib Sawiris goes to war with EFSA

EDGING CLOSER to the brink: The Central Bank of Egypt announced that its foreign reserves climbed to USD 19.59 bn at the end of September — their highest level since June 2015 — from USD 16.56 bn a month earlier. Looking at CBE data, the increase is almost entirely attributable to an increase in deposits at the central bank, possibly signalling that Saudi Arabia’s deposit had already arrived before last weekend. Sources speaking to Al Mal break the increase down as such: USD 1 bn first tranche payment from the World Bank; a USD 2 bn deposit from the UAE; and USD 300 mn from the Saudi Fund for Development. Reuters also has the story.

The EGP continued to weaken against the USD yesterday, with greenbacks trading at a record high of EGP 13.80-13.85 per USD 1, according to the average range cited by traders speaking to Al Mal. The EGP’s slide against the USD is mainly attributable to expectations of devaluation ahead of today’s auction or in an exceptional auction.

Egyptian stocks hit a two-month high yesterday on the same expectations, Bloomberg reported. The EGX 30 rose 2.9% to 8,110.96, its biggest one-day rise since July 27, with CIB and Talaat Moustafa Group among the day’s top gainers. Pharos Holding’s Mohamed Radwan said devaluation could happen this week, adding that the FX crisis needs to be resolved “once and for all to attract foreign investments.”

They’re baaack… The House of Representatives will reconvene from recess today and will be playing catch-up. Its first session will include the final vote on the Civil Service Act, said Legal Affairs Minister Magdy El Agaty. The final vote on the law was delayed twice after the House failed to achieve quorum. At the top of parliament’s agenda this session: A new clampdown on illegal migration, an issue that shot to the top of the House’s priorities after the capsizing of a migrant boat off Egypt’s northern coast saw at least 204 die. MPs will also be dealing with the fallout from That Thing Called Agina’s latest public statements: The National Council of Women and Cairo University President Gaber Nasser have filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office after the MP called for women to undergo [redacted] tests as a condition for admission to university, according to Al Masry Al Youm. The NCW has also filed a complaint with House Speaker Ali Abdel Aal. The House also seems determined to note 150 years since the November 1866 establishment by Khedive Ismail of the Advisory Council of Representatives with some kind of celebration in Sharm El Sheikh, Ahram Online reports. The precursor to today’s House saw 75 members gather for the first time on 25 November 1866.

Google will unveil its Pixel Phone today in two sizes, according to extensive leaks yesterday. We were fans of the Nexus 4 / 5 / 6P and are looking forward to seeing how the devices are received. The Verge’s Dan Seifert has a great roundup on what to expect of the rest of the event (published prior to yesterday’s Pixel / Pixel XL leaks).

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? That childhood brain-teaser is the only thing that comes to mind as we ponder whether to watch tonight’s debate between the two US vice-presidential contenders, who have never managed to seem so superfluous. They are: Mike Pence (governor of Indiana, Trump’s running mate) and Tim Kaine (senator from Virginia, running with Clinton).

It’s Nobel season: The Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced today. The announcement press conference will be available online at 11:45 am CET. Yesterday saw the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of mechanisms for cellular autophagy, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced yesterday. Ohsumi groundbreaking work studied how cells break down and recycle their own components. The award committee says “Ohsumi’s discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how the cell recycles its content. His discoveries opened the path to understanding the fundamental importance of autophagy in many physiological processes, such as in the adaptation to starvation or response to infection. Mutations in autophagy genes can cause disease, and the autophagic process is involved in several conditions including cancer and neurological disease.” The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be announced on Monday, 10 October.

El Garhy, Amer in DC to push for IMF approval of USD 12 bn facility: Finance Minister Amr El Garhy and Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer will reportedly be in DC on Wednesday to lay groundwork for Egypt’s final push to secure USD 12 bn IMF facility ahead of the upcoming annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group, due to take place on 7-9 October. They will reportedly be joined by International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr and Planning Minister Ashraf El Araby. El Garhy and IMF Egypt mission chief Chris Jarvis both warned in the past few days that it’s unlikely the IMF’s executive board will pass the facility in the next two weeks.

A ban on the sale in Egypt of tickets that do not begin or end in Egypt will go into effect on Wednesday. Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi issued the decree over the holiday weekend.

Also on Wednesday, the Emirates NBD / Markit purchasing managers’ indices for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are due at 6:15 am CLT. The Egyptian gauge deteriorated for 11 straight months through August.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi will discuss the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam with Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir at Ittihadiya on Wednesday.

Thursday is a national holiday in observance of Armed Forces Day.

NAGUIB AT WAR WITH EFSA: Naguib Sawiris’ Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding (OTMT) announced yesterday that it is in deadlock with the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority regarding “breaches” attributed to the its major shareholder, the Sawiris-controlled OTMT Acquisition. In a very public raising of stakes, Sawiris’ OTMT — the vehicle that controls Beltone Financial — said it is calling a meeting of its board to discuss how the company will “continue its business given its current inability to expand and perform its core business normally.” The note essentially suggests that OTMT’s shares have been made useless as acquisition capital given the ongoing threat of regulatory action.

Background dates to CI Capital bid: The conflict broke out when OTMT Acquisition asked EFSA for to declare it had no objection to OTMT-Beltone’s c. EGP 1 bn acquisition of CI Capital, for which OTMT had said at the time it had up to EGP 1 bn to lend to Beltone. The bid for CI Capital was scrapped in June after what Bloomberg characterized as “a six-month effort mired in regulatory delays” during which time EFSA declined to issue the certificate of non-objection. Central to the case was EFSA’s insistence that OTMT breached an undertaking in its five-year-old demerger from Orascom Telecom Holdings (more background on the demerger in OTMT’s June 2012 prospectus for its GDRs, pdf).

OTMT claims it has tried since then to patch things up with the regulator and alleges that “EFSA was not able to make a decision to reconcile and conclude the procedures necessary for the reconciliation until date, which had a negative effect on [OTMT Acquisition], [OTMT] and its remaining shareholders, as well as the complications resulting from hindering the acquisition of CI Capital.”

Regulator won’t give a timeframe for investigation: EFSA Chairman Sherif Samy denied yesterday having refused OTMT’s request, saying EFSA is still “looking into the case.” Samy declined to give a timeframe for EFSA’s investigation, Al Mal reported. The newspaper quotes him as saying that by issuing yesterday’s statement, OTMT Acquisitions has signalled that it has unilaterally decided not to move forward with its request.

And on the topic of Naguib: He remains the talk of the town this week for effectively making Cypriot residency available via installments through his 80% stake in the Marina Ayia Napa development. Al Borsa says sales are projected to hit EUR 500 mn.

NO DATE FOR THE VALUE-ADDED TAX REGS? It would be hard to confirm when exactly the executive regulations for the value-added tax (VAT) will be ready as the document is very extensive, said Salah Youssef, head of the Tax Authority’s research department. This comes despite Tax Authority boss Abdel Moneim Mattar saying on Sunday that the regulations will be out this week. Youssef did confirm that they have been drafted and are currently being reviewed by senior officials in the Finance Ministry, Al Mal reports. By law, the government has 30 days from the day a bill is signed into law to issue the executive regulations, which puts the deadline at 9 October.

Lawyers Syndicate believes definition of their profession as “free and independent” means “free and independent of taxes”: Among the surprises that Mattar announced was that lawyers will be getting a break, for no stated reason. And how are lawyers showing their gratitude for the pandering? The Lawyer’s Syndicate has filed suit in the Administrative Court, according to Ahram Online, demanding the VAT legislation be struck down. The suit, filed on Sunday, alleges that lawyers are exempt from paying taxes under Article 198 of the constitution, which defines the profession as “Free” or “independent.” The lawyer among us toils on the day shift at Inktank, so we have no recourse as at dispatch time, but our reading of Article 198 has us questioning the grounds of the claim. Pay your taxes, counsel. If we have to, you have to. The Finance Ministry has already agreed that legal services will be subject to 10% VAT, not the 13% (rising to 14% next year) that other professions will be forced to charge. Check it out for yourself in the Egyptian Constitution of 2014, page 49 (pdf).

Are private medical practices really VAT-exempt? Legal Affairs Minister Magdy El Agaty tells Al Mal that parliament has not amended clauses of the VAT concerning exempting private medical practices from tax. Mattar had announced on Sunday that all non-cosmetic healthcare services and pharma products are VAT-exempt, including private medical practices, so presumably, these will be part of the regs. In the meantime, the Medical and Pharmacist Syndicates have been locked in emergency meetings to figure out how the VAT will affect them and awaiting the regs to be released to get a better idea, Al Borsa reports.

CHINA FORTUNE LAND DEVELOPMENT COMPANY has signed an agreement which would see it invest USD 20 bn to develop and manage 14,000 feddans in phase 2 of the New Administrative Capital, according to a government statement run by Al Mal and Reuters. Under the agreement signed with the ministers of housing and investment, the company is to provide funding for the development including all relevant infrastructure, with the Housing Ministry providing land and the Investment Ministry securing all the required permits. The project is expected to take place during the second phase of the new capital’s construction and draw in another USD 15 bn in new foreign direct investment, read the statement. CFLD has also promised to organize a summit in China aimed at drawing investments to Egypt.

In other China-related news, the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company has signed a USD 660 mn loan agreement with a number of unnamed Chinese banks to fund the development of 1,210 km of transmission lines which will be built by the State Grid Corporation of China, Al Borsa reports.

SELF-STYLE ‘ADVOCACY’ GROUP attacks Cleopatra Hospital Company: We’re going to be a bit hyperbolic here and note that the enemies of the free market have again raised their ugly heads, this time attacking Abraaj-backed Cleopatra Hospital Company. A group calling itself the “Egyptian Center to Protect the Right to Medicine (ECPRM)” claims Cleopatra — which owns four major Cairo-area hospitals, including Cleopatra, Al Shorouk, Nile Badrawi and Cairo Specialised — raised its prices 30-45%, Al Mal reported, and wants the Health Ministry to stop renewing the licenses of any hospital owned by Abraaj. The group also plans to file a complaint against Abraaj and / or Cleopatra with the Egyptian Competition Authority, alleging monopolistic practices. The only problem with that: Cleopatra controls single-digit market share (by number of hospital beds). ECA chief Mona El Gary said the authority has previously looked into Abraaj’s acquisitions in Egypt’s healthcare industry and found no evidence of anti-competitive or monopolistic practices.

BROKERAGE LEAGUE TABLE: EFG Hermes topped the Egyptian Exchange’s September 2016 league table with an 18.3% share of all market executions, followed by CI Capital (11.1%), Beltone Financial (6.2%), Pioneers Securities (3.9%) and Al-Rowad Securities (3.5%). In the nine months to 30 September, EFG Hermes remains number one with a 18.9% share, followed by CI Capital (9.7%), Pioneers (5.2%), Sigma Capital (4.1%) and Pharos Holding (4.0%). You can view the September rankings here or the 9M16 rankings here, both as pdfs.

RUSSIA MAY REINSTATE WHEAT EXPORT DUTIES should the ruble weaken or if domestic harvests fall significantly, said Russia’s Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev on Sunday, according to TASS. "If something extraordinary happens: a dollar jumps to 80 or 100 rubles, then, of course, we shall again [introduce the export duty]…or, say, we have extremely low crops – not 116, but 40 million tonnes, then we shall have to stop export to keep grain inside Russia," Tkachev told the Duma. Russia had eliminated export duties on wheat beginning in 23 September, Reuters reports.

Egypt calling the bluff: Egypt’s wheat imports should not be affected by any such move by Russia despite Russian wheat making up 44% of Egypt’s imports, said an unnamed official from the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) on Monday. Egypt has diversified its sources of wheat from the Black Sea to include Ukraine and Romania, said the official. Any such move would be a violation of international trade agreements, adding that the statement was meant to coax the market and raise the price of French grain, according to Al Masry Al Youm.

Meanwhile, GASC issued a tender on Monday to purchase an unspecified amount of wheat for delivery during the first ten days of November, Al Mal reports. This would be the second major tender issued since Egypt cancelled its zero-tolerance policy on ergot. Egypt purchased 250K tonnes of Russian wheat in the first tender after the flip-flop.

IKHWAN LEADER WHO CALLED FOR ASSASSINATION OF EL SISI KILLED BY MOI: The Interior Ministry issued a statement [Arabic] early this morning saying security personnel killed Mohamed Kamal, a former member of the Ikhwan’s ruling Guidance Bureau before his reported ouster last May, in a shootout. The ministry also killed another member of the armed cell, according to the statement. The Brotherhood said that Kamal had disappeared on Monday afternoon, Reuters reported. Kamal had led a breakaway group of younger Ikhwan members who openly called for violence and for the assassination of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, according to a report from the Carnegie Endowment in March. Reuters has more on the story.

SHAFIK ‘NOT RUNNING’ FOR OFFICE: Ahmed Shafik, the former presidential candidate and Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, publicly denied he is running for the presidency in 2018 through his Twitter account. His denial comes after ONTV talk show host Amr Adib claimed on Saturday that Shafik will run and has already set up a shadow cabinet (runtime: 1:51). While claiming that he had sources to confirm the report, had Adib done a little investigative journalism, he would have found Shafik is still embroiled in a case to get his name taken off of a travel ban in Egypt. Shafik’s PR consultant added call-in to a different program on LTC (runtime: 3:38) that Shafik had left the political scene. We can only imagine Shafik’s reaction when hearing the news.

THE MAD DOG OF CONSTANTINOPLE is at it again with his favorite line. No, not that Gulenists are everywhere, hiding in between sofa cushions, under his bed, and possibly in his central bank when it starts to exhibit independence. No, his line is that relations between Egypt and Turkey will not be restored until Morsi and his supporters are released from prison. To be fair, Erdogan is very “pro catch and release” in general, as his country has been emptying its prisons of tens of thousands of criminals since at least August to fill it up with journalists, lawyers and judges who may or may not have been connected to the failed coup attempt against him, as was widely reported by the New York Times, among many others. Erdogan, who displays a pathological obsession with Egypt and cannot let a week go by without mentioning its name, said in an interview with Saudi television channel Rotana Khalejia on Sunday that while “It is very useful to have trade tries with Egypt,” that he does not “accept communication on my level and consider this unethical.” Egypt’s foreign ministry spokesperson declined to comment on “such statements that the Turkish president does not get tired of,” Ahram Online reported.

It’s an exceptionally quiet morning for Egypt in the international press this morning, but that may not last for long. Little stirs journalists more than news that another scribe has been mistreated, and the Associated Press’ outstanding Hamza Hendawi reports that “the lawyer for three Egyptian journalists who were arrested while conducting street interviews [on the president’s “loose change” speech] claimed that they were beaten and tasered by security officers during questioning at a central Cairo station.”

The Al Masry Al Youm columnist with the pseudonym Newtown says people can disagree with steel tycoon and former NDP member Ahmed Ezz, but they should not stop him from exercising his right to voice his opinion on national policy. Newton, referencing Ezz’s op-ed of last week, points to Ezz’s economic knowledge and bemoans the less tolerant attitude domestically. The dismissive attitude towards figures like Ezz erodes society’s core values, he believes.

Look at Ezz’s business acumen, Al Ahram columnist Makram Mohamed Ahmed adds. He notes that while Ezz’s political advice was never the best, his experience in business and economics is undeniable due to his leading the planning and budget committee for ten consecutive years.

Mastermind or scapegoat? Scathing Bloomberg profile of former head of Deutsche’s Russia equities desk: Before German lender Deutsche Bank’s shares tumbled last month following news the US Department of Justice’s asked the bank to pay USD 14 bn to resolve a probe into the bank’s mortgage securities from 2005-2007 — far exceeding the money Deutsche has set aside for litigation, but which the bank said was simply an “opening position” by the DoJ to start negotiations — the bank was already dealing with another crisis also currently under investigation by the US authority: a USD 10 bn scandal to funnel money out of Russia and into London mostly via mirror trading.

Yesterday’s Bloomberg profile on the man at the center of alleged wrongdoing, the former head of Deutsche’s Russia equities desk Tim Wiswell, serves as a sequel of sorts to the New Yorker’s take that we ran as our Worth Reading back in August. “Mirror trades are not inherently illegal,” the New Yorker’s Ed Caesar wrote at the time. “Viewed with detachment, however, repeated mirror trades suggest a sustained plot to shift and hide money of possibly dubious origin.”

A full month before news of the mirror trading scandal broke, Deutsche released a note titled Dark Matter (pdf) which opens with: “Errors and omissions in the balance of payments should be random, but are not… In the UK, large positive net errors and omissions likely represent unrecorded financial inflows… For the first time, we confirm through balance of payments data the popular belief that Russian money has flooded into the UK in recent years… there is strong evidence that a good chunk of the UK’s GBP 133 bn of hidden capital inflows is related to Russia.”

As for Wiswell, this Bloomberg profile is pretty brutal: “At first Wiswell was, in the language of a Russian trading floor, a ‘desk b****.’ Former colleagues say he ran errands, fetched breakfast, and loaded Jay Z tracks onto his boss’s iPod.” (Read A Russian tragedy: How Deutsche Bank’s “Wiz” kid fell to Earth)

IN HIS OWN WORDS: Former Supply Minister Khalid Hanafy speaks about the circumstances surrounding his ouster (erm, resignation) in an interview with Amr Adib that aired Sunday on ONTV. Hanafy appears to hold no hard feelings. In the first part of the interview (runtime: 29:35), he praised the work of the House of Representatives’ committee investigating the wheat fraud. Having a minister resign because of political pressure from the legislative branch of government and public opinion (he incorrectly claims to have been the first in Egyptian history to have done so) is a sign of how far the country has come in terms of political maturity, he argues. In part two (runtime: 20:49), Hanafy addressed the controversy of his stay at the Intercontinental Semiramis, implying that the nature of MP Mustafa Bakry’s job as both media pundit and MP prompted his very political and entirely unsubstantiated attacks. At the end of the interview, one can’t help but feel sorry for the guy — doubtless the point of the exercise.

“The EU is remarkably soft in tone towards Egypt,” Marietje Schaake, Dutch member of the European Parliament says. Schaake says “there is often a huge gap and double standards. For a long time, for example, we were very critical of human rights abuses in countries like Egypt. The past two years it seems like the choice has been to be much milder towards General Sisi who is now the president of Egypt and actually making matters worse than they have ever been according to human rights defenders I speak with.” She is seeking to limit the export of tools used in torture as well as medicines that can be used to give lethal injections, saying “Europe cannot just stand by.”

Egypt’s State Council (Maglis El Dawla) approved the final draft of the contract to construct the Daba’a nuclear power plant with Russian involvement, Sputnik reported. Electricity ministry spokesperson Mohamed El Yamany said the contract will now be forwarded to the government and presidency.

The number of companies who have put in requests for licenses to import natural gas has risen to five, with one more non-Egyptian company submitting an offer, an unnamed source told Al Borsa. We had noted last month that Dolphinus Holding and TAQA Arabia, along with two other non-Egyptian companies, were bidding for the licenses. EGAS currently awaits the approval of the House of Representatives on the Natural Gas Act so it can issue the licenses, with some companies already given a preliminary approval.

Italian energy firm Edison will begin drilling three at its concessions in Idku, Abu Qir, and North West El Gindi, head of business development Tarek Shalaby told Al Borsa. He also added that Edison and Qalaa Holdings are currently in negotiations with the oil and electricity ministries to build a 180 MW power plant in Abu Qir that will be supplied with natural gas from the company’s field, he added. The cost of the power plant is estimated at EUR 100 mn and will be split evenly between the two companies, said Shalaby.

Royal Dutch Shell and BP are reportedly competing for E&P licences in three blocks in the Western Desert and the Gulf of Suez as part of a tender by the EGPC, an unnamed source told Al Mal. Shell has reportedly already sent offers for two blocks in the Western Desert, while BP is bidding for one block in the Gulf Suez.

The Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority (EMRA) is currently assessing 120 abandoned gold mines to reissue them to investors, Omar Taema, head of the EMRA told Al Borsa. The mines are becoming attractive again as their proximity to seawater is expected to reduce extraction and excavation costs, he added. Egypt has one of the lowest costs for gold extraction, ranging between USD 700-800 per ounce, said Taema.

The General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) has purchased 50k tonnes of raw sugar from Brazil for USD 545 per tonne for a total cost of USD 27.3 mn, Supply Minister Mohamed Ali El Sheikh announced, according to Al Ahram.

The number of factories that have shut down production has risen to 1,624 across 16 investor associations, while 625 have partially shut down between Badr City and the Association of Investors for Small and Medium Enterprises, Al Borsa reported, including a detailed infographic.

The Trade and Industry Ministry is studying establishing a company to manage and build industrial complexes targeting SME projects, sources told Al Borsa. The company’s board will include representatives from the Industrial Development Authority (IDA), industrial developers, as well as the ministry, the source added. The IDA is aiming to launch its first industrial complex in Badr City within a year, the source said.

Damietta furniture city will be completely inaugurated within less than one year, Trade Minister Tarek Kabil announced according to Al Ahram. Separately, Banque Misr and the Damietta Furniture City Company have signed a cooperation protocol involving a potential EGP 1.5 bn loan in support of craftsmen in the city, Al Mal reported.

Prime Minister Sherif Ismail ordered the development of a strategy to ensure that FX is made available for the pharma sector at a meeting with the Deputy CBE Governor, Health Minister Ahmed Rady and the heads of a number of pharma companies, Al Shorouk reports. The allocation will cover both imported products and production inputs, Al Borsa reported. With the FX reserves up USD 3 bn and expected to grow further next month, the cabinet apparently believes there is room to increase FX allocation to the industry from a current USD 2.6 bn per annum. The move appears to be geared toward convincing the industry not to demand price hikes post-devaluation. As we noted last week, the industry is in panic mode and is bracing itself for the effects of the devaluation, prompting the Federation of Egyptian Industries to heighten its lobbying campaign for an increase in the price of meds. Since the meeting yesterday, the head of the FEI’s Pharma Division, Ahmed El Ezaby, told Al Borsa that the move to raise prices of meds 20% achieved little and resolving the FX shortages should be the primary goal.

Early childhood education in Egypt should be a priority in order to create a paradigm shift in Egypt’s education system, Amira Kazem writes for the World Bank’s Arab Voices blog. “In the short-term, [early childhood education] improves early cognitive development; in the long-term, it improves both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, including a child’s likelihood to stay in school, his or her educational attainment and future likelihood of finding employment, and even a child’s prospects for better health.” Kazem says support early education initiatives require establishing conducive environments, expanding equitable access to programmes, and improving the quality of service provided.

Prime Pharma has signed an agreement with FC Barcelona to promote medical tourism in Egypt through the Tour n’ Cure program in partnership with Pharco. The program, which will focus on Hepatitis C, will primarily target patients in the European Union with a focus on Spain, Al Borsa reports. The Tour n’ Cure logo will be printed on the club’s 2016-17 season gold tickets as part of the agreement. It seems we have finally found out where Koftagate’s Abdel Atty has been hiding, and we await news that his upcoming kofta franchise is signing on with the La Liga team as a sponsor.

Telecom Egypt (TE) is likely to sell its stake in Vodafone Egypt to a government entity or a state-owned bank, Ahram Gate says. Former NTRA executive president Amr Badawy says the issue had been brought up before when the authority auctioned off 3G licences and barred any applicants with stakes of over 10% in any of the existing MNOs to bid. Badawy suggests IPOing TE’s stake on the EGX. He says the entire situation is turning farcical and anticompetitive, asking how would TE representatives be sitting on Vodafone Egypt’s board meetings as they discuss strategic plans while they are representing the competition? Badawy expects Vodafone Egypt would bid for a large portion of the stake and pay for it using the retained earnings the company is unable to repatriate to its parent abroad.

ICT Minister Yasser Al Qady will inaugurate the first phases of two new tech zones in New Assuit and Borg El Arab next month. The launch will take place at the Cairo ICT conference running 27-30 November, Youm7 reports. The zones were previously announced to begin operations in October and are part of larger plans to construct seven new tech zones.

Egyptian Automotive Trading Company has entered talks to assemble three Volkswagen cars domestically, CEO Karim El Naggar told Al Mal. Meanwhile, Kayan Egypt, of which El Naggar is a shareholder, is in talks to assemble Seat vehicles domestically, he said. The VW models include the Parati, Pointer, and Polo models.

Egypt has received a second consignment of mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armoured vehicles from the United States, the Defence Ministry announced, according to IHS Jane’s. The first consignment was delivered last May, but the exact number of both was not revealed. IHS Jane’s says “the US Defense Security Co-operation Agency’s (DSCA’s) Excess Defense Articles (EDA) database shows the transfer of 762 MRAPs to Egypt has been approved: 400 Caiman MRAPs, 260 RG-33 MRAPs, 90 RG-33L armoured ambulances, and 12 Maxxpro MRAP recovery vehicles.

Russian paratroopers are set to travel to Egypt in October to embark on a joint military exercise, Russia’s Defence Ministry said, Sputnik reported. This marks the “first time in history Russian paratroopers participate in drills in Africa” (you know, if you set aside all those little wars they fought on the continent as “advisors” to their proxies when they were known as the “Soviet Union”), with the exercises aimed at practicing “the destruction of illegal armed groups in the desert.”

Egyptian squash players are topping the world rankings yet again, with Nour El Sherbini and Mohamed El Shorbagy claiming the number one spots for October’s Women’s and Men’s rankings. From the Professional Squash Association website, seven of the top ten men’s players and five of the women’s (six, if we are allowed to claim USA’s half-Egyptian Amanda Sobhy) are from Egypt. Egypt made history by becoming the first country ever to boast seven players inside the World’s Top Ten.

“This is shaping up to be the worst year for Saudi stocks since the [global] financial crisis,” Bloomberg reported yesterday, declaring that KSA equities are back in the grip of a bear market amid the continued bite of austerity.

Team USA beat Team Europe early morning yesterday to win their first Ryder Cup title since 2008, beating Europe 17-11 at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota. The tussle between Patrick Reed and Rory McIlroy on the final day was particularly memorable and the BBC said “it exceeded expectations on a raucous, emotionally charged front nine of the highest quality.” USA Captain Davis Love said his team has “been criticised for eight or 10 years for not coming together. We have been kicked around for so long. You keep losing and you feel like you have to do something different. We all said we are going to do whatever it takes.” The final day’s highlights are available here (runtime 04:13) as well as Team USA’s media interview following their win in Hazeltine (runtime 09:12).