US Vice President Mike Pence will stop in Egypt this coming Saturday, 20 January, to meet with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi as part of a regional tour that will also take him to Jordan and Israel.

Pence’s visit comes a few short days after Al Azhar’s two-day conference on Jerusalem. At a separate conference in Ramallah, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Central Council called on President Mahmoud Abbas to suspend the Oslo agreement and withdraw Palestine’s recognition of Israel as a state, Bloomberg reports. The council also wants to end security cooperation with Israel and work again to seek full statehood recognition at the UN.

Arab League member states are scheduled to meet less than two weeks after Pence’s visit to discuss how best to counter US President Donald Trump’s Jerusalem declaration.

Prime Minister Sherif Ismail could be returning to work some time next week. The PM is said to be already easing back into things by working from home.

Arqaam Capital will hold its Egypt Investors Conference 2018 this coming Monday, 22 January, in Cape Town, South Africa.

CI Capital is holding its MENA Investor Conference on 30 January.

The 49th Cairo International Book Fair will run from 26 January until 10 February, featuring 848 publishers from 27 countries.

The IMF will issue a report on the results of its second review of Egypt’s economic reform program in the next few weeks. We’re expecting to hear good things from the IMF, which agreed last month to disburse the third trance of its USD 12 bn extended fund facility to Egypt, lauding reform measures for “yielding encouraging results.” The USD 2.03 bn tranche would bring the total amount disbursed up to c. USD 6.08 bn.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi is expected to inaugurate the combined-cycle mega-power plant at Beni Suef sometime in mid-February, an unnamed Electricity Ministry source tells Al Shorouk. The plant will be operating at full capacity three months ahead of schedule by the time of the inauguration.