READER COMMENT- In regard to our pickup yesterday of data from the Financial Times suggesting Egypt had netted nearly USD 20.8 bn in greenfield FDI in 7M2016, reader Alex W writes: “If you look at the most recent CBE data, total FDI inflows were about USD 9.5 bn for the period from July 2015-March 2016, including USD 3.5 bn for the January-March 2016 period. It’s hard to see where the USD 21 bn (the FT figure for Jan-July 2016) can come from, especially given devaluation (and prospects of more devaluation later in the year, which typically means foreign investors will hold off). The only major change in FDI spending this year, as far as I can see, is Zohr — several bn USD has probably been spent on it so far in 2016. There’s a few other smaller gas projects, and you could possibly count all the spending on the Siemens plants, but theoretically that’s not FDI because the government is the one spending the money (even though it’s being borrowed from foreign lenders). I’m sure there’s bits of FDI scattered across other sectors (real estate, etc) but can’t see how it would make up the USD 21 bn figure.”

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