WATANI International
21 November 2010
USD500 Million Century Bond
Egypt is studying offers from investment banks to issue 100-year bonds valued at as much as USD500 million, Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali said. Egypt raised USD1.5 billion in its first overseas sale of dollar bonds in nine years in April to take advantage of a decline in borrowing costs. “Egypt is on course to beat its budget deficit target for a second straight year as the economy recovers from the global financial crisis,” Boutros-Ghali said. The shortfall will “very likely” decline to 7.5 percent of gross domestic product in the fiscal year through June from 8.1 per cent in the previous 12 months, he said.
World Bank into power
Egypt and the World Bank have signed two new loan agreements worth USD820 million in the largest financing provided by the institution to the country’s electricity sector. The two agreements are for the construction of a 1,500 megawatt combined cycle gas turbine power plant in north Giza, worth 600 million dollars, and the development of wind power project worth USD220 million.
Shamsad Akhtar, the World Bank vice president for the Middle East and North Africa region, who signed the agreement with Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Abulnaga, said the World Bank was “pleased to support the renewable energy strategy of Egypt and its ambitious programme for scaling up development of the wind and solar power plants. The programme can serve both national and regional goals of achieving fossil fuel savings, protecting the environment, creating green jobs and attaining technology transfer.” Egypt boasts some of the world’s best wind power resources, particularly in the Gulf of Suez, where at least 7,200 MW could be potentially developed by 2022, the World Bank said.
…And EU too
The European Investment Bank is granting Egypt a 560 million Euro support package for priority electricity generation and transmission investment, alongside a 20 million Euro European Union grant contribution for the Egyptian Power Transmission Project. The loan for the Egyptian Power Transmission Project forms part of a financing package under the Neighbourhood Investment Facility, alongside loans from Germany’s KFW and Agence Française de Développement, as well as EU grant funding. The project should strengthen and expand the Egyptian electricity grid and connect wind farms currently being constructed on the Red Sea coast.
Online harassment map
Egypt has earned notoriety for being one of the worst countries in the Middle East when it comes to sexual harassment; women’s rights groups have previously described the harassment on the street as Egypt’s “cancer”. A group of activists has decided to fight the leering and groping with a new private venture that, beginning in the near future, will use open-source mapping technology to identify harassment hot spots in Cairo and allow women to instantly report incidents of sexual abuse through text messaging and on social media sites. “HarassMap” will reportedly run off the open-source software platform Ushahidi, which was first used to report violence in Kenya in 2008. HarassMap co-founder Engy Ghozlan said the idea came from a group of volunteers.
Berlin Technology University in Gouna
Last week the Cabinet approved an agreement to set up a branch of Berlin University of Technology in al-Gouna in Hurghada. The agreement was signed by the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Hani Helal and Berlin’s Senator for Education, Science and Research Jurgen Zollner.