This week’s visit to Cairo by Saudi monarch King Salman is set to bring a new package of much needed aid, as Egypt struggles to curb its budget deficit and find new resources to fund its three-year development plan.
Egypt was set to sign the final version of four funding accords with Saudi Arabia on 9 April just after MEES went to press. Two of these are soft loans for which framework agreements were signed in March in Riyadh: $20bn to finance Egyptian imports of oil products from Saudi Arabia over the next five years and the second $1.5bn for development projects on the Sinai Peninsula which has been plagued by jihadist instability. (CONTINUED - 1009 WORDS)
