"In less than two weeks, the cabinet will fully announce the plan to offer all [mandated] companies on the Egyptian exchange in 2023," Madbouly said in a presser following a tour of housing projects in Cairo's Capital Gardens City.

The step, Madbouly explained, goes in line with the recently launched State Ownership Policy Document – which charts a roadmap to determine the state's presence in economic activities and enhance the private sector's participation in public investments.

The prime minister said the cabinet has been engaged in discussions on how to activate the EGX and expand the participation of Egyptians in all public institutions.

The ownership document, ratified in December, states that Egypt seeks to grant the private sector a greater role in the country’s economic activities, raising this role from 30 percent at present to 65 percent within three years.

Listing public companies on the bourse, which will also revive the country's initial public offering IPO programme for state-owned assets, is one of the three types of partnerships with the private sector that will govern the total or partial exit of the government from a group of economic activities.

Egypt offered the first state-owned company, tobacco monopoly Eastern Company, on the EGX under the IPO programme in March 2019.

The programme was paused due to the coronavirus pandemic before it was resumed with the listing of payments firm e-finance on the stock market in October 2021.

In late December 2021, the Egyptian cabinet said the country was planning to list shares of the three power plants it has built in partnership with Germany's Siemens on the stock exchange.

Boosting the role of the private sector in growth in parallel with reducing the size of the state’s footprint in the economy was one of the country's commitments, and targets under the $3 billion 46-month loan approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in December.

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