The Sovereign Fund of Egypt has received three offers from strategic investors to buy substantial stakes in the National Company for the Sale and Distribution of Petroleum Products, known as Wataniya, namely Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), and Saudi Arabia's Petromin, sources told Daily News Egypt. The sources said that several investors, some of them local, especially TAQA Arabia, showed their interest in the transaction, especially after the Sovereign Fund said that there was no maximum limit for the acquisition. They pointed out that the offers came after the promotional tour that the Sovereign Fund carried out some time ago. Hala El-Said, Minister of Planning and Economic Development and Chairperson of the Sovereign Fund of Egypt, said last week that the Fund received six non-binding offers and it chose three of the applicants to move forward with their due diligence studies. The Fund is expected to approve the transaction between October and November of this year. So far, the Egyptian government announced its exit from $1.9bn worth state-owned assets, as part of the government IPO programme. El-Said said that one of the main axes of the programme was increasing the participation of the private sector. She added that the State Ownership Policy Document provided a set of different tools to ensure its implementation, including offering some state-owned assets or companies to increase capital in partnership with the private sector. Some of those assets were offered to the private sector under usufruct.
