On 1 March Cairo announced that it was raising gasoline prices by an average of 9% for Q2, the highest such increase since the formation of an ‘automatic pricing committee’ in Q3 2019 (MEES, 12 July 2019). Egypt is now trying to play catch-up after receiving a rebuke from the IMF for not adhering to its own pricing ‘mechanism’ – part of the reason that the $3bn funding agreed by the IMF in December was much less than that sought by Cairo (MEES, 23 December 2022). A further $10bn is slated to be raised from the sale of state firms, with Gulf SWFs tapped as key investors (MEES, 24 February).

As part of the December IMF agreement, the Egyptian authorities say that going forward “We will continuously implement in full the retail fuel price indexation mechanism” in order to “reflect global price movements in domestic fuel prices.” (CONTINUED - 819 WORDS)