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  • Saudi Arabia offers to buy part of Sharm El Sheikh from Egypt

    Ras Ghamila, which lies at the northern end of Sharm El Sheikh, is one of the resort town’s more upmarket locations, around 15km north of the central district surrounding Na’ama Bay. The local reefs are considered some of the most beautiful of Sharm’s fringing coral reef, and recently made headlines as the site of a Libyan-flagged LPG tanker stranding.

  • How Hamas Saved Egypt

    Last fall, Egypt was on the brink of economic collapse. A decade of debt-fueled spending on a pharaonic-scale had emptied its Central Bank coffers. By February, Cairo’s public debt was 89% of its gross domestic product. External debt had soared to 46% of GDP. The pound, its currency, was one of the world’s worst performing. Unable to import supplies and repatriate profits, foreign companies were leaving, or threatening to leave Egypt in droves. Annual inflation was over 35%, and double that for some food staples. Egypt seemed on the verge of a sovereign default—its first ever.

  • Ras Ghamila: Saudi Arabia offers to buy Egyptian premium Red Sea area using deposits

    Saudi Arabia has presented Egypt with an offer to purchase Ras Ghamila, a prime Red Sea tourist destination, including pulling its deposits from the Central Bank of Egypt, and the acquisition of several government companies, according to an Egyptian government source. The source, who works in the Ministry of Public Business Sector, the entity tasked with negotiating the deal, told Middle East Eye that Saudi officials offered to use the kingdom's deposits with the central bank (CBE), which amount to $10.3bn, an option favoured by the Egyptian side which will allow immediate access to foreign currency.

  • Egypt’s headline inflation slowed to 32.5% in April

    Egypt’s annual urban consumer price inflation rate decreased to 32.5 percent in April from 33.3 percent in March, slowing slightly more than analysts had expected, data from the country’s statistics agency CAPMAS showed on Thursday. Month-on-month, prices rose by 1.1 percent in April, up from 1.0 percent in March. Food prices declined in April by 0.9 percent, though they were 40.5 percent higher than a year ago. A poll of 17 analysts had expected annual inflation to dip to a median 32.8 percent, continuing a slowing trend that started in September when inflation reached a peak of 38.0 percent.

  • Opinion: A U.S. Deal Could Make Saudi Arabia the Next Egypt

    Will they, or won’t they? That is the question that the Middle East-watching world has been asking for the past few weeks. Will the United States and Saudi Arabia announce the big defense pact-plus deal that officials in both countries have been working on since at least mid-2023?

  • Israeli military takes control of vital Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt

    The Israeli military seized control of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt on Tuesday and its tanks pushed into the southern Gazan town of Rafah after a night of air strikes on the Palestinian enclave.
    The Israeli offensive took place as mediators struggled to secure a ceasefire agreement between Israel and its Hamas foes and as the conflict entered its 8th month.
    The Palestinian militant group said late on Monday it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal but Israel said the terms did not meet its demands.

  • Egypt says no deal with Saudi Arabia on Ras Gamila resort yet

    The Egyptian government denied on Sunday that any foreign investment deal in prime Red Sea coastal land in Ras Gamila has yet been officially approved amid local and regional reports saying otherwise.

    The official spokesman for the Ministry of Public Enterprise, Mansour Abdelghany, told state-run Ahram online that “no offer for the development of Ras Gamila would be considered until an international advisory firm is tasked with designing "an optimal investment plan for the zone.”

  • Egypt reclaims 3,400-year-old stolen statue of King Ramses II

    Egypt welcomed home a 3,400-year-old statue depicting the head of King Ramses II after it was stolen and smuggled out of the country more than three decades ago, the country's antiquities ministry said on Sunday.
    The statue is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but not on display. The artefact will be restored, the ministry said in a statement.
    The statue was stolen from the Ramses II temple in the ancient city of Abydos in Southern Egypt more than three decades ago. The exact date is not known, but Shaaban Abdel Gawad, who heads Egypt's antiquities repatriation department, said the piece is estimated to have been stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

  • Egypt’s Sisi starts third term pledging more investment, social spending

    Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was sworn in for his third term on Tuesday in the country's new capital, the largest of the mega-projects that have come to symbolise his rule while stretching the country's finances.
    Speaking at the new parliament building, Sisi highlighted the challenges Egypt withstood in recent years while promising continued development, which many Egyptians say they feel excluded from.

  • Blinken to visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt to discuss Gaza ceasefire: Official

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week to discuss efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and increase humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday. Blinken will hold talks with Saudi leaders in Jeddah on Wednesday before travelling to Cairo on Thursday for talks with Egyptian authorities, spokesman Matthew Miller said from the Philippines, where Blinken is touring. This will be Blinken’s sixth trip to the Middle East since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7.