Egypt issues its first Islamic sukuk

The Islamic sukuk mainly targets investors from the GCC market who prefer to invest in an Islamic compliant investment instrument.

According to the minister of finance after being contacted by Ahram Online, all further details will be revealed later on Tuesday.

According to Bloomberg, the initial yield set for this issuance is above 11.6 percent.

Egypt has assigned HSBC, Crédit Agricole, Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, and City Group to manage the issuance process.

Under their new $3 billion loan deal with Egypt, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated Egypt’s financing gap Egypt will reach $17 billion over the four years of the deal’s programme.

Egypt is endeavouring to bridge this gap through securing other loans from a number of international financial institutions (IFIs), including the IMF and World Bank, along with selling a segment of state-owned assets with an initial targeted collection ranges between exceeds $8 billion through the end of the IMF-backed programme.

Egypt is set to initiate its initial public offering (IPO) programme through which it will offer 34 state-owned companies in 18 economic activities to be floated in the Egyptian stock exchange and to be offered to strategic investors.

Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, Egypt has depreciated its local currency by over 100 percent and hiked its key interest rates by a total of eight percent, which both have contributed to the exodus of about $25 billion in indirect investments and caused a shortage in the hard currency in the local market, especially in the US dollar.