The Sovereign Fund of Egypt (SFE) now has portfolio of owned assets has separately reached 13 billion Egyptian pounds ($825.7 million), SFE CEO Ayman Soliman told CNBC Arabia in an interview (watch, runtime: 16:00), without naming any of the assets.
He added that the fund also has nearly 26 billion Egyptian pounds in assets under management (AUM).
The fund has allocated 750 billion Egyptian pounds for the healthcare sector, in addition to assets including lands and hospitals.
The SFE is focusing on healthcare and logistics for the pharma industry, electricity, transport, agriculture, and infrastructure through specialized sub-funds as part of its plan to recalibrate its priorities, which began when the pandemic took hold in March, he added.
It’s also currently working on the sale of a 70 percent stake in the first of three Siemens / Elsewedy Electric / Orascom Construction combined-cycle power plants to private sector investors and marketing stake sales of up to 100 percent in army-affiliated companies to the private sector.
The fund could consider issuing sukuk and conventional bonds to fund infrastructure projects it’s planning to tender to the private sector through its infrastructure sub-fund, Soliman told CNBC Arabia.
Debt and sharia-compliant sukuk issuances are an attractive source of financing for the fund as they can be backed by the Finance Ministry, he added. This would make the SFE another state-backed entity that could potentially issue sukuk as Egypt is getting ready to pass a bill that would pave the way for our first sovereign sukuk sale.
