The Monetary Policy Committee of the CBE decided to maintain interest rates for the sixth time in a row since December 2020.

Newsletter

08 Aug 2021

For our top talks today, first, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) decided to maintain interest rates for the sixth time in a row since December 2020. It decided to keep the overnight deposit rate, overnight lending rate and the rate of the main operation unchanged at 8.25%, 9.25% and 8.75%, respectively. The discount rate was also kept unchanged at 8.75%. The MPC based its decision on the readings of June’s inflation, as annual headline urban inflation marginally increased to 4.9% in June 2021 from 4.8% in May 2021. We believe that the hardest challenge is to maintain the current interest rates to be consistent with achieving the inflation target of 7% (±2% points) on average by Q4-2022.

Also, the CBE has issued new policies for banks, upon which banks shall respond to clients’ requests in terms of closing inactive accounts or re-activating accounts, without imposing any fees.
On the other hand, savings accounts are considered dormant if they have not seen any activities performed by customers in a period of two year.
Second, king Khufu's first boat settles in the Grand Egyptian Museum.
The museum's team succeeded in installing it on its permanent display in the museum. The boat will remain inside its metal structure until the completion of the building of the Khufu Boat Museum, where a tight environmental control system has been set up inside the structure to monitor temperatures and humidity. The opening of the GEM is considered one of the most important tourism events that the whole world is waiting to happen, as it will be the largest museum in the world and the only specialized museum in to display the treasures of the great Ancient Egyptian civilization in an attractive modern way with using the modern technology in the museum display and a unique services and centers.
Equally important, Egypt will receive the first shipment of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine by tomorrow. Noting that Egypt contracted with the African Export-Import Bank to import 20 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses. New shipments of Sinopharm, Sinovac, Sputnik, AstraZeneca vaccines are expected this month as well.
Egypt's single-day toll of infections and deaths has been on a downward curve since early June as the country has passed the peak of the third wave. However, it is expected that the cases will rise again in September due to the fourth wave that is hitting many countries currently.
By the same token, Egypt Minister of Trade and Industry affirmed the ministry’s keenness to activate the role of the branches of the Industrial Development Authority in the governorates to provide all services provided by the Authority to investors, with the aim of facilitating procedures and saving time and effort.
We believe this would positively reflect on the speed of service provision to the investor, noting that the implementation of decentralization represents a clear approach for the Ministry during current stages.
Moving to the Egyptian stock exchange talks, we expect that 3 sectors on the Egyptian Stock Exchange, which are real estate, non-banking financial services, and petrochemicals, will perform well this week, supporting the market movements.
These sectors are witnessing a strong buying interest from Arab investors. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that mills will witness as well a good performance this week, benefiting from what President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi announced to increase the price of bread.
In the same fashion, we need to highlight that the petroleum sector is currently implementing an integrated program to develop and upgrade the refinery and petrochemicals system in Egypt, with up to 14 billion USD in investments.
The petroleum ministry plans to boost operation efficiency at the existing refineries, to add new production units, and to establish new petrochemical projects.
And for our companies talks, Enaya Medical Care aims to serve 150,000 clients by the end of this year.
The company will increase the volume of its business of medical contracts and the number of beneficiaries of them, for the benefit of insurance companies contracting with it in the market by between 10% and 15% annually, in light of the repercussions of the Corona virus on the medical insurance sector.
In the light of investments talks, Remco for Tourism Villages Construction has received an offer from a group of Egyptian investors to acquire Remco for Real Estate Construction's entire stake of 99.98% in Empain Tourism Investments Company.
The acquisition offer for 100% stake in Empain tourism Investments Company is worth 350 million EGP according to a bourse disclosure published on Wednesday.
Finally, Speed Medical had allocated investments in the sectors of analysis laboratories, specialized clinics and hospitals, with a total value of 400 million EGP during the next 2022.
The business results of Speed Medical Company showed an increase in its net profits to 40.9 million EGP during the first quarter of 2021, compared to about 7.1 million EGP during the comparative period of 2020. Adding, its revenues rose to 65.3 million EGP during the period from January to March of 2021, compared to 25.1 million EGP during the comparative period of 2020.