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Thursday, 10 November 2016

On the horizon

Next week is shaping up to be another busy news week:

The board of directors of the IMF will meet tomorrow to vote on a USD 12 bn bailout for Egypt. IMF boss Christine Lagarde is recommending approval. We have more updates in the Speed Round.

The CBE (and everyone in government and the media and no one else) appears to have 11/11 on the brain. The central bank has instructed banks to close on Friday for security reasons, the newspaper reported. Friday is a banking holiday, but banks were given the greenlight to remain open throughout the weekends since the float to maximize FX inflows. Lord knows we could have egg (or worse) on our face on Sunday, but we still maintain that 11/11 is a creature of the domestic press, not of activists.

Amer to meet bank chiefs on Sunday: Central Bank of Egypt Governor Tarek Amer will hold a meeting on Sunday with bank heads and other members of the Federation of Egyptian Banks to discuss their FX positions and liquidity in the market, Al Borsa reports. Sources speaking to Al Mal frame this as the first in a series of periodical meetings to touch base.

Also on Sunday: Finance Minister Amr El Garhy is expected to testify in front of the House of Representatives’ Economics Committee about the impact of the economic reform program on the state budget. Committee members are floating trial balloons on the possible implementation of a progressive tax bill to help close the budget deficit.

The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will convene on Thursday, 17 November to review interest rates.

The executive regulations of the value-added tax will be revealed sometime next week and will be put out for “national dialogue,” said Deputy Finance Minister Amr El Monayer. You can check out some features to look out for here.

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