Egypt to offer dollar-dominated bonds during coming period

CAIRO – 30 October 2019: The Ministry of Finance intends to launch a new dollar-dominated bond offering in the international financial markets in the coming period.

The ministry clarified Wednesday that this step comes to get maximum benefit of the improvement in the economic conditions in emerging markets, and of the lower interest rates on Egyptian treasury bonds in the secondary market, in light of the increasing demand from foreign investors for Egyptian international bonds, which reflects positively on reducing the cost of financing.

According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance, five international investment banks have been qualified to promote the new offering of the international dollar-dominated bonds in global financial markets within the financing program for the current fiscal year 2019/2020.

The statement added that Citi Bank - JP Morgan - BNP Paribas - Natixis - Standard Chartered qualified as offering managers, and promoters.

The Office of Local Legal Counsel (Tamimi & Associates) and the Office of International Legal Counsel (Dechert) also qualified as international consultants.

Minister of Finance Mohamed Ma’it said in September that Egypt targets to offer $3 billion to $7 billion in international bonds in the current fiscal year 2019/2020, adding that Egypt is interested in offering bonds in Chinese yuan, but more requirements need to be met.

In February, Egypt issued international bonds worth $4 billion in three categories that were five times oversubscribed, the Ministry of Finance announced.

The dollar-denominated bonds come with maturities of 5, 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 roadshow to promote 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.