The past two months have brought a string of landmark moves in Egypt’s privatisation programme, widening the role of the private sector in the economy.
Part of the equity in Wataniya petrol stations was sold to a private equity company marking the divestment of the first military‑affiliated company, the management of Gabal Al-Zeit, the country’s second‑largest wind farm, shifted to the private sector, and eight other firms including three petroleum heavyweights were temporarily listed on the stock exchange as a preparatory step to divesting stakes in them.
Alongside these steps, the government unveiled an updated State Ownership Policy Document that named the sectors that would be targeted for privatisation in the second phase of the programme until 2030.
The first phase, which ran from 2022 to 2026, saw 12 privatisation deals worth $5.9 billion.
When compared to the 12 deals that were finalised in these four years, the developments of the last two months can be considered as putting the programme into a higher gear.
“This is not an acceleration of the pace of the privatisation as most of the deals had been in the making for years,” said Monsef Morsy, head of research at CI Capital.
In 2023, the government said it would divest 32 companies including five military affiliated firms and Banque du Caire. It later raised the number of companies to 35.
Wataniya and Gabal Al-Zeit are not cases in which a stake of the company is bought by an investor.
In the case of Gabal Al-Zeit, the government has kept the ownership of the land and provided the Emirati investor Alcazar Energy with the right to operate and upgrade the wind farm.
Wataniya, owned by the military‑affiliated National Service Projects Organisation (NSPO), has transferred 172 of its petrol stations to a newly established company, Quick Fuel for Petroleum Products Trading and Distribution.
Local energy player TAQA Arabia has taken a 10 per cent stake in Quick Fuel, with the option to expand later.
TAQA Arabia is 20 per cent owned by the NSPO and will assume full responsibility for managing, operating, and developing Wataniya’s nationwide network of 269 stations.
“Privatisation does not necessarily imply that the state is pulling out from public companies. It means that it is also enabling the private sector to manage and operate existing assets with higher efficiency and value generation in the long term and is generating investment inflow that is also considered asset divestment,” Morsy said.
According to Ahmed Abdel-Naby, head of research at Mubasher, both the Wataniya and Gabal Al‑Zeit transactions reflect efforts to apply a key principle of good governance: separating ownership from management.
The approach works best when the operator has a proven track record in running such assets, something that applies to both Alcazar Energy and TAQA Arabia.
Abdel-Naby added that the Wataniya transaction could pave the way for offering the remainder of the company to a strategic investor. Its temporary listing would require the publication of financial results and the formalisation of company documents as key prerequisites for privatisation.
A cabinet statement on the wind farm deal noted that its value “will be directed towards reducing public debt as part of a plan aimed at strengthening the role of the private sector in renewable energy projects and maximising the use of state assets.”
The two announcements were light on details. While it was revealed that the Gabal Al-Zeit deal will see Alcazar paying $420 million without giving details of the management terms, the exact value of the Taqa deal has not been announced.
MP Safwat Al-Bayady demanded that parliament’s economic committee reveal the details.
“There are legitimate questions the government must answer about how the plant was valued, the nature of the contract, and whether it represents the full sale of the asset, a management and operations partnership, or a time‑bound usufruct arrangement. Equally important is the fate of the loans, grants, and financing that contributed to the project’s construction,” Al-Bayady said.
“It is also essential to clarify the net return expected for the state after deducting obligations and to disclose whether studies compared the deal’s proceeds with the revenues that continued operation of the plant could have generated in the coming years.”
Another development is the trend of temporarily listing companies on the local bourse.
Abdel-Naby explained that this is essentially a preparatory step for privatisation. It ensures that the paperwork is in order so that, should an investor show interest or the government decide to proceed with an initial public offering (IPO), the company will be ready, he said.
In addition to the fact that Gabal Al-Zeit and Wataniya belong to the energy sector, three out of the eight temporarily listed companies belong to the oil and petrochemicals sector and two more, Petrojet and Midor, are to follow suit.
Energy companies are attractive privatisation hopefuls because they combine profitability, strategic importance, and investor appeal, Abdel-Naby said.
Morsy added that the petroleum sector is large and not present enough in the local market. “The size of these companies and their huge dollar-denominated revenues make them very appealing to investors,” he said.
Observers believe that the government’s commitment to privatisation is related to its loan deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which treats progress on the privatisation programme as a critical benchmark for further funds.
The fact that the present $8-billion loan deal will end in December has raised questions about Egypt’s commitment to the State Ownership Policy Document after the expiry of the deal.
“Privatisation is a part of the IMF recommendations, but the government is not privatising only to comply with the IMF deal. It has its own plans to expand the role of the private sector and leverage its assets,” Morsy said.
He argued that, whether the government is managing a crisis or pressing ahead with economic reforms, it is consistently signalling its determination to stay the course, even in the absence of a new IMF agreement.
Asked if the timing is suitable to offer companies for privatisation against the background of a still-fragile regional peace accord, Morsy said that specifying the optimum timing is never an easy thing, not only in Egypt but in all global markets as there could always be internal or external obstacles.
Abdel-Naby said it is not the timing or the appeal of the sector that it at issue. What really matters in the upcoming privatisation deals is proper valuation, he said
In addition to the companies already temporarily listed there is a queue of high-profile state enterprises, including oil heavyweights Petrojet and Midor alongside financial pillars Banque du Caire and Misr Insurance.
The government aims to raise approximately $4.5 billion from these sales over the next three years.
Recent updates from the cabinet’s State-Owned Companies Unit indicate that several major transactions are nearing completion. The government expects to finalise the fair-value study for Misr Life Insurance in the first half of July, clearing the way for a 20 per cent stake flotation on the stock exchange.
Meanwhile, the long-delayed Banque du Caire offering has been assigned a firm year-end deadline. A 30 per cent divestment is now targeted for November, with investor roadshows scheduled to take place throughout September and October.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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