FinMin expects minimal damage to tourism revenues from Ukraine war: Egypt’s tourism revenues will more than double in FY 2021-2022 from a year earlier, according to figures announced by Finance Minister Mohamed Maait last week. The Finance Ministry is projecting revenues to reach USD 10-12 bn in the current fiscal year, up from USD 4.9 bn a year earlier, Maait said during a meeting with US investment banks in London at the weekend, according to a statement by the ministry.

No Ukrainian + Russian tourists, no problem? The forecast suggests that the ministry doesn’t expect the loss of Russian and Ukrainian tourists to make a huge impact on revenues, despite the countries accounting for more than 30% of all arrivals prior to the war. The sector brought in USD 5.8 bn during the first half of the current fiscal year. The government is yet to release figures for 3Q 2021-2022, so it’s not clear how the conflict has impacted revenues or how successful the government’s attempts at luring tourists from other markets have been. We expect breaking into new markets to take time.

Remittances from Egyptian expats will also rise this year: The government expects remittances to rise to USD 32.5 bn by the end of the fiscal year, Maait said. This would be a 3.5% increase from the USD 31.4 bn worth of inflows from which Egypt benefitted last year.

Egypt was one of the biggest recipients of remittances in 2021: Some USD 31.5 bn was sent to Egypt in calendar year 2021, making us the fifth-largest recipient of remittances in the world. The World Bank expects receipts to rise 8% this calendar year, which would put the figure at around USD 34.8 bn, according to our calculations.