Egypt’s eurobond issuance will be in the USD 2.5-3 bn range and will take place any time in the coming four to eight weeks, Finance Minister Amr El Garhy told Youm7 last week on the sidelines of his keynote speech at the 6th EFG Hermes London MENA and Frontier Conference. This comes as the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) is planning to raise between USD 600 mn and USD 1 bn through its own international bond issuance sometime in 1Q17, Chairman Hisham Okasha said, according to Youm7.

“We were on the slow pace in responding to what’s happening to the economy and we have to move in my opinion a bit faster,” El Garhy told global investors at the EFG Hermes conference, according to Forbes’ Dominic Dudley. “The years since the 2011 revolution had seen the country make ‘a textbook of mistakes’,” he says. Now, Dudley says, Egypt is accelerating the pace of reforms and is set for an EGP devaluation that observers could bring the FX rate down to EGP 11.5-12.0 per USD 1. The arrival of the first tranche of the WB loan underscores the potential of the Egyptian economy in light of the reforms undertaken such as the value-added tax.