What we’re tracking on 20 June 2017
IT’S OFFICIAL: Eid Al-Fitr in Egypt will be a three-day break from Sunday, 25 June until Tuesday, 27 June, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail announced yesterday, according to AMAY. All public institutions will be closed on those days. The Central Bank of Egypt subsequently announced (pdf) banks will also be closed Sunday-Tuesday.
The Electricity Ministry will be announcing new electricity prices after the Eid Al Fitr break, minister Mohamed Shaker said yesterday, explaining that only those customers in the highest consumption tier will be paying more than it actually costs to generate electricity, according to Youm7. Those consuming over 1,000 KW a month will be paying a price higher than the actual cost of production at EGP 0.97 per KW. Profit generated on the highest-volume consumers will be used to defray in part the subsidy earmarked for users in the lowest-consumption tier, Shaker added.
Budget talks postponed to today: The House of Representatives’ general assembly will kick off its debate of the Ismail government’s FY2017-18 budget today. The discussion was originally due to get underway yesterday, but was postponed to allow MPs time to wrap up other agenda items including amendments to the income tax code and raises for state bureaucrats, Al Borsa reports. We have more on what they got up to yesterday in the Speed Round.
Keep your ears to the ground: Last night was the deadline imposed by Investment Minister Sahar Nasr for a government committee to finish drafting the first cut of the executive regulations that will govern the new Investment Act.
PSA- Enterprise will be taking the full week off next week, as we suspect many of you kind people will. We’ll be back to our normal publication schedule on Sunday, 2 July.
So, when do we eat? Maghrib prayers are at 6:59pm CLT in Cairo, and the cutoff time for sohour is 3:08am.