Cabinet approves 3rd Samurai bond issuance

Cairo – October 25, 2023: The latest round of Samurai Bonds issuance has been approved by the cabinet, revealed a Tuesday statement. The bonds will be $500 million with a five-year maturity.

Egypt has previously issued Samurai bonds, with the upcoming issuance being the third batch, with the country’s first ever Samurai bonds issued in March 2022 and a recent August 2023 batch. Both were issued with a converted value of $500 million.

The cabinet also ratified the procedures for the issuance of sovereign and sustainable Panda bonds in the Chinese market.

Egypt recently launched Panda Bonds (Chinese Yuan-denominated) for the first time in the MENA region. The bonds were worth ¥3.5 billion ($500 million) with a yield of 3.5% over three years.

The decision to issue these bonds is part of the government’s strategy to diversify funding inflows to support its budget deficit and bolster its foreign reserves.

The Samurai and Panda bonds will support the government in narrowing its financial gap, explained Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait earlier this week. Maait noted that the gap is currently estimated at $6-8 billion for FY2023/2024, with the total external debt at $165.3 billion.

The Tuesday statement also shared that the cabinet accepted the presidential resolution for a grant agreement signed with the French Development Agency (AFD), worth €56.7 million, aimed at increasing Egypt’s wheat silos storage capacity through building additional silos and improving the efficiency and quality of wheat import chains.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) and the Belgian Jan De Nul was given the go-ahead by the cabinet. The MoU would kick off any studies needed for exporting renewable electricity from Egypt to Europe via the Mediterranean through a submarine line of 2 gigawatts (GW) at least.