1. What is the latest on Egypt’s IMF deal?

The Egyptian government has been negotiating an IMF programme since March 2022, and according to government officials and the IMF spokesman, the two parties will reach an agreement “very soon”. Even so, the agreement will require the approval of the IMF Executive Board, which will likely take place in

Key View

• Rising medicine prices will slow pharmaceutical sales growth over the next five years.
• Continued economic pressures will accelerate growth in generic drug sales.
• Drug shortages will become more frequent in the short term.

Rising medicine prices will slow pharmaceutical sales growth over the next five years. Egypt has been

Key View

• EIPICO’s new manufacturing plant will increase local production and reduce Egypt’s pharmaceutical import reliance.
• The boost to local manufacturing will fill an unmet need in the market, so does not present significant competition to multinational drugmakers.
• Drugmakers will remain concerned about the market access environment in

Key View

• Egypt's oil and gas production will see slower growth over 2022 amid underperformance over January-May 2022.
• We continue to expect some growth in Egypt over 2022 on the back of some new upstream developments, improved contractual terms for some producers and announcements from some players on increased spending and higher output

Key View

• At Fitch Solutions we foresee limited improvement in Egypt’s current account deficit due to a higher import bill and a slower recovery in the tourism sector.
• An IMF programme and other multilateral funding, along with foreign direct investment, and followed later on by debt issuance will allow Egypt to cover its external financing

Key View

• We at Fitch Solutions anticipate that the Central Bank of Egypt will increase its overnight deposit and lending rates policy rates by 100bps each over the remainder of 2022, to 12.25% and 13.25% respectively.
• Above-target band inflation will provide impetus for hiking. After averaging 11.1% y-o-y in H122, we forecast inflation will

Key View

• At Fitch Solution we continue to expect that the Central Bank of Egypt will hike by 100 basis points in H222 in a bid to bring back inflation within its 5.0%-7.0% target band.
• That said, we see rising risks to this view from easing inflationary pressures and rising debt servicing cost.
• Additionally, higher rates will do little at

Key View

• Higher commodity prices, rising inflation, and lower tourist inflows will result in weaker vehicle sales. We expect that these factors will depress consumer spending and reduce vehicle affordability as automakers increase sales price to reflect the rising cost of manufacturing.
• Exacerbating the downbeat outlook for vehicle sales is

Key View

• We at Fitch Solutions anticipate that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will result in a wider current account deficit in Egypt, coming in at 4.3% of GDP in FY2021/22 (July 2021 – June 2022) and 4.2% of GDP in FY2022/23.
• Higher wheat prices will increase the import bill while reduced tourist arrivals from the two countries will depress