The Eid Al-Adha holiday kept the market safe from the effects of the Irish government's growing debt, which shook the international stock and foreign exchange markets last week. The market was off for three days and by the time it reopened on Thursday, the situation had already improved for international markets amid news that the International Monetary Fund and the European Union will extend aid to Ireland. On the local macroeconomic level, Egypt's non-petroleum exports grew to LE90.458 billion in the first 10 months of the year, compared to LE75.056 billion in the January to October period of last year. The Ministry of Trade and Industry is planning to double exports to reach LE100 billion by the end of 2010. Meanwhile, urban consumer inflation remained unchanged at 11 per cent from January to October. This means the Central Bank of Egypt is unlikely to raise interest rates in December. Prices of food and beverages, which account for 44 per cent of the weighting of the basket Egypt uses to measure inflation, slightly dipped to 19.3 per cent by October, down from 21.3 per cent in September. ORASCOM TELECOM HOLDING (OTH): The international mobile operator sold the 50 per cent stake it used to own in Tunisia's mobile network Tunisiana to Qatar Telecom for $1.2 billion. Tunisiana had more than 5.7 million subscribers at the end of September. According to Reuters news agency, this transaction corresponds to an enterprise value equal to 6.7 times Tunisiana's 2009 earnings. Moreover, the value of the deal puts the annual return on OTH's investment in Tunisiana since 2003 at over 40 per cent. The transaction will be completed on 2 January 2011. Naguib Sawiris, OTH's executive chairman, said: "This transaction is in line with our strategy to dispose of non-core assets to strengthen OTH's liquidity position and balance sheet and redeploy capital in our core markets." It is unclear how this deal will affect the pending merger between OTH and Russia's VimpelCom. On another front, OTH Chief Executive Khaled Bishara told a Morgan Stanley conference in Barcelona the company still hopes to resolve the dispute with the Algerian government over its Djezzy unit, although it has not ruled out arbitration as a last resort. Bishara said that if the company is not contacted by the Algerian government, and if it is not offered a price for Djezzy that it considers fair, OTH will resort to arbitration by the second quarter next year. "We would only go to arbitration as a last resort," Bishara said, adding that the international arbitration could last between two and four years. The Algerian authorities called investment banks last month to submit their proposals to help value local mobile firm Djezzy, OTH's biggest revenue earner, and which Algeria wants to nationalise. Referring to the effect of problems on the Algerian front on the VimpelCom deal, Bishara said, "We got [VimpelCom] management understanding what the risks for Algeria are." He added that they have contacted VimpelCom's Alexander Izosimov and asked him whether they would continue with the deal even if there are problems with Algeria, and "Izosimov said yes," Bishara added. VimpelCom's board is expected to make a decision on the deal at a meeting set to take place either by the end of this month or in mid- December.
