Egypt Denies Suez Canal Seeks 300 mln Euro Loan
Posted by Joseph Keefe
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Egypt's government denied in a statement on Thursday that the Suez Canal Authority was seeking a 300 million euro loan from Gulf lenders.
Three senior banking sources that did not wish to be named had told Reuters last week that the authority requested a loan from Gulf banks in order to purchase two dredgers.
"The Suez Canal has not borrowed any money from any foreign banks, and everything that had been mentioned about this issue is nothing but baseless rumours," the government statement said.
The sources last week provided no further details on the loan and the Canal Authority could not be immediately reached for comment.
The Suez Canal Authority said in a statement on its website last month that revenues for the 2017-2018 financial year rose 11.5 percent to a record high of $5.585 billion, up from $5.008 billion a year earlier.
Egypt in 2015 inaugurated an $8 billion expansion of the canal as a pillar of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's aim to bring about an economic turnaround in the Arab world’s most populous country and restore its place as an important trade hub.
The canal is the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia and one of the Egyptian government's main sources of foreign currency.
Reporting by Alaa El Din Hussein