El Garhy speaks on the eurobond issue; coverage of the Aswan National Youth Conference fills the airwaves
The USD 4 bn eurobond issuance covered the funding gap in the FY2016-17 budget and part of FY2017-18 financing gap, said Finance Minister Amr El Garhy in call-in to Hona Al Asema’s Lamees Al Hadidi. El Garhy said that the turnout for the issue — which was 3x oversubscribed — was more than expected, especially for the 30-year bonds. “This reflects the confidence investors have in Egypt’s economic reform program,” he said. “We met more than 100 investors in the US, Europe and the Middle East and we got more than 720 requests to subscribe,” El Garhy said. The revenue of the bonds will reach in the public coffers by 31 January or the 1st of February, he said.
After Lamees expressed concern over the repaying the interest on the bonds, El Garhy told her that Interest rates were not high when compared to other countries making similar issuances. Timing was crucial, said El Garhy, who added that If Egypt tried to do pull off the issue three or four months ago we would not have the same result (watch; runtime: 9:30).
Lamees also covered President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s visit to Aswan for the National Youth Conference. “I ask the president to hold this conference at a different governorate every month, because Egyptians simply do not move unless a high-ranking official is visiting,” she said (watch; runtime: 2:32).
In the weekly 4+1 debate, Lamees’ panel discussed the commemoration of the 25 January, raising salaries of ministers and Donald Trump’s policies (watch; runtime: 33:38).
Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker told Al Hayah Al Youm’s Lobna Assal that the ministry has allocated EGP 4.4 bn to be spent on developing transmission and distribution projects over the next two years in Upper Egypt. “We boosted power capacities by 12 GW in Upper Egypt since 2014,” Shaker said, adding that six turbines in Beni Suef power plant have entered trial operations phase, at a capacity of 400 MW for each (watch; runtime: 7:30).
Housing Minister Mostafa Madbouly — who spoke at the youth conference — called in to state that 66,000 homes have been built and delivered under the Social Housing program in Upper Egypt out of 106K homes slated for the region at a total cost of EGP 16 bn. “Another 40,000 homes will be completed in 1H17,” he added (watch: runtime: 4:29).
Kol Youm’s Amr Adib and Yahduth fi Masr’s Sherif Amer were off last night.