Egypt postpones issuing green, Asian bonds to next fiscal year

CAIRO – 14 April 2019: “We will make sure that next year we will be more ready to issue Panda, Samurai and Green bonds,” Minister of Finance Mohamed Ma’it told Bloomberg.

“We are not going to issue any new debt in the international market in the current fiscal year," he added, saying that no decisions have been made regarding the size of the offerings or their timing.

According to Ma’it, the issuances were planned to take place in the current fiscal year but were postponed to give the government more time to prepare and to comply with Euroclear regulatory requirements.

On April 5, Ministry of Finance announced that Egypt has put up for sale international bonds at a value of €2 billion in two tranches.

The statement noted that Egypt issued 6-year bonds worth €750 million, maturing on April 11, 2025 in addition to 12-year bonds at a value of €1.25 billion, maturing on April 11, 2031.

Ma'it said previously that Egypt will return to the international bond market before the end of the current fiscal year 2018/2019, clarifying that the upcoming issuance will be in currencies other than dollar or through new products.

The Ministry of Finance announced earlier that Egypt issued international bonds worth $4 billion in three categories that was five times oversubscribed.

The dollar-denominated bonds came with maturities of five, 10 and 30 years in a sale and will be offered at high revenues, as the subscriptions exceeded $21.5 billion.

In October 2018, Ma'it launched a pan-Asian road show to promote its international bonds in the South Korean capital, Seoul. The promotion campaign continued in November in several important Asian markets, topped by Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China and Japan.