IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde says the institution is likely to downgrade its global economic growth forecast in October — the sixth such downgrade in the past 18 months — over weakening demand, falling trade volumes and the delayed effects of the potential fallout from Brexit and slowing economic activity, according to a Reuters interview on the sidelines of the G20 summit. “You could argue that Brexit is not really delivering the massive crisis that we had expected, you could argue that the Chinese transition is proceeding reasonably well… however, when you look deep down at the economic growth prospects… we are not getting very good signals, and we will probably be revising down our forecast for growth in 2016,” Lagarde said.

Egypt loan agreement: Lagarde also commented on the preliminary agreement between the IMF and Egypt, saying that the “agreement with the IMF is an indication that they [Egypt] are taking their economic restructuring, their economic objectives seriously, and that should encourage either friendly neighboring countries or other bilateral partners to actually participate in the funding,” she said. Interestingly, aside from Gulf Arab allies, Lagarde indicated this may also include other countries that “are willing to chip in,” she added.

On a related note, the US-Egypt Business Council has sent the IMF board a strong recommendation to approve the USD 12 bn facility penned by John Christmann, Chairman and CEO of Apache Corporation. The council represents 54 corporations including General Electric, Coca Cola, Exxon Mobil and Boeing. Scroll past Al Borsa’s Arabic summary to read the letter in full in English.