Egypt will temporarily list three oil‑sector companies on the local exchange, stepping up plans to sell stakes in state‑owned firms under its IMF-backed privatization program, the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said in a statement on Sunday. The government also confirmed that military‑owned businesses won’t be part of this year’s offerings.
The move comes as Egypt seeks to demonstrate progress on privatization ahead of the International Monetary Fund’s final review of its loan program later this year after the lender repeatedly criticized delays in carrying out actual share sales
Hashem El-Sayed, assistant to the prime minister and chief executive of the State Ownership Unit, said the current offering program includes listing 30 state-owned companies, including 20 affiliated with the public business sector and 10 from the petroleum sector. However, he said the plan “does not include listing military-owned companies on the stock exchange.”
El-Sayed said the temporary listing is the first step in the offering process, followed by fair value studies and the selection of investment banks to manage and execute the offerings.
The Egyptian Exchange announced on June 24 that the Engineering for the Petroleum and Process Industries (ENPPI) and the Egyptian Linear Alkyl Benzene Company (ELAB) had applied for temporary listings with issued capital of $357 million and nearly $210 million, respectively. The government said Sunday that a third petroleum company has now been listed under the program.
The latest listing comes weeks after the Cabinet announced that the National Service Projects Organization had signed an agreement to transfer a stake in Wataniya fuel stations to TAQA Arabia, while indicating that an additional stake in the company could be offered on the stock exchange in the future, without setting a timetable.
Egypt is currently under pressure to accelerate the privatization program. Bloomberg reported Friday that Egypt had met the IMF’s privatization program requirements, paving the way for the release of a new $1.6 billion tranche under the IMF financing agreement signed in 2022.
However, during its visit to Egypt in May, the IMF mission criticized the government for limiting its efforts to listing 16 state-owned companies on the stock exchange without completing any actual offerings, according to a senior Finance Ministry official familiar with the talks who spoke to Al Manassa.
The source said the government attributed the delay in implementing the privatization program to regional tensions stemming from the war with Iran, arguing that market volatility could undermine the success of the offerings and their ability to attract investors.
Throughout the program reviews, the IMF continued to press for an expanded privatization program as a way to increase foreign currency inflows and reduce the state’s role in the economy. However, in its fifth and sixth reviews, it concluded that progress remained below the government’s commitments.
With the program’s eighth and final review expected in November, the remaining months of this year will test whether the government can turn temporary listings into actual public offerings.
