Regional News

  DHIBAN / AP Sabri Mashaaleh feels misled and angry: The 29-year-old studied counseling expecting to find a civil service job, in line with what used to be a typical life path for college-educated Jordanians. Four years later, he’s still unemployed. His last hopes were crushed earlier this summer when troops tore down the tent in his small, remote hometown ...

  Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund is stepping up lending in a region where economic reformers haven’t exactly had the most success. Hoping to restore the confidence of foreign investors, Egypt announced an initial agreement on Thursday to borrow $12 billion over three years from the IMF, joining Iraq, Tunisia and Jordan in taking money from the Washington-based fund. Egypt’s ...

  CAIRO/ Reuters Egypt’s public prosecutor has ordered the arrest of 13 people for 15 days pending an investigation into their role in a wheat procurement corruption scandal, judicial sources said. Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, has been mired in controversy over its wheat supplies, with industry officials claiming that over 2 million tonnes of the 5 million tonnes ...

  CAIRO / Reuters Egypt’s preliminary deal for a $12 billion IMF loan programme can go to the board for approval only if the government secures $5-6 billion in bilateral financing for the first year, Chris Jarvis, the head of the IMF mission in Cairo, said. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said earlier it had agreed in principle to grant ...

  Reuters Bahrain-based Investcorp is aiming to make one to two new investments in the next year in each of its regions of the United States, Europe and the Gulf, Co-Chief Executive Rishi Kapoor said on Thursday. The investments will help contribute to Investcorp’s goal of more than doubling its assets under management in the next five to seven years ...

  Bloomberg Australia rejected bids for electricity network Ausgrid from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing and State Grid Corp. of China, amid growing opposition to selling infrastructure assets to overseas investors. Treasurer Scott Morrison said it would be contrary to national security to allow the offers to proceed in their current form and said the bidders, which he didn’t name, ...

  Bloomberg Egypt reached an initial agreement with the International Monetary Fund over a $12 billion package designed to restore the confidence of foreign investors and ease a crippling dollar shortage hampering economic growth. The three-year agreement aims to “improve the functioning of the foreign exchange markets, bring down the budget deficit and government debt, and to raise growth and ...

  AP Three Egyptian dailies said that Cairo was proposing to IMF delegates an 18-month reform program in return for a $12 billion loan over three years to shore up its economy, but that differences remained between the two sides on how to proceed. The reports by the privately-owned Al-Shorouk, Al-Masry Al-Youm and Al-Watan said the two sides were at ...

  AGENCIES Revenue from Egypt’s Suez Canal reached $3.183 billion in the period between January 1 and August 6, up 4 percent from $3.059 billion in the same period last year, the Suez Canal Authority Chairman said. Mohab Mameesh, who was speaking at a one-year anniversary celebration of the opening of an expansion to the canal, said the canal’s revenues ...

  Bloomberg When commodity prices crashed in late 2014, oil executives could look at their mining counterparts with a sense of superiority. Back then, the world’s biggest oil companies enjoyed relatively strong balance sheets, with little borrowing relative to the value of their assets. Miners entered the slump in a very different state and some of the world’s largest — ...