The Finance Ministry doesn't have any immediate plans to take a $ 7 bn eurobond sale to market in 1H2021, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait told Kelma Akhira's Lamees El Hadidi yesterday (watch, runtime: 3:17). Maait denied an earlier report from Asharq Bloomberg suggesting that Egypt is actively moving towards a sale, explaining to Lamees that the state budget gives the Finance Ministry the license to borrow up to USD 7 bn through debt instruments in the international market. Whether or not the ministry decides to issue that amount of international debt — or any debt at all, for that matter — depends entirely on the circumstances as the fiscal year progresses, Maait explained. Also, not in the cards right now: Egypt's planned sale of Samurai and Panda bonds, which the government is pushing to FY2021-2022 because of complications caused by covid-19, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait tells the local press. The government has been mulling the yen- and yuan-denominated bonds since 2018, and said last year that it would issue the bonds in 1Q2020 but postponed the issuance. Marketing foreign bonds in Asian markets requires more complicated clearance procedures such as new ratings assessments by Asian ratings agencies
