The Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) formed a new committee to valuate the assets offered by the Ministry of Public Enterprise Sector to settle the debts owed by the ministry’s subsidiary companies to the EGPC.
A government source told Daily News Egypt that the formed committee was tasked with preparing a comprehensive valuation of the assets offered for settlement, and to discuss their suitability to oil projects. The source added that the EGPC has a binding agreement with the Ministry of Public Enterprise Sector to settle the debts of its subsidiaries, in return for obtaining unutilised assets, mostly land.
The source did not disclose the value of the estimated debt owed by the EGPC to the companies of the Public Enterprise Ministry, but the Minister Hisham Tawfik has previously put the figure at EGP 12bn.
The source expected that the settlement to be agreed upon between the EGPC and the Ministry of Public Enterprise to contribute to settling the accumulated debts of the current period, and that it will be different from previous agreements.
“The past years have witnessed many attempts by the government to schedule the repayment of debts, but public enterprise companies did not commit to repay according to the agreed scheduling,” he said. Walid El-Rashid, deputy chairperson of the Holding Company for Chemical Industries, said that the holding company offered two plots of land belonging to El Nasr Fertilizers and Steam Boilers worth up to EGP 2bn to settle its debt to the Ministry of Petroleum estimated at EGP 3.5bn.
He told Daily News Egypt that the land was offered several months ago but has not received a reply. He did not clarify the status of the settlement or the rest of the indebtedness.
At the end of December 2018, the Holding Company for Spinning and Weaving, the Holding Company for Chemical Industries, and the Holding Company for Metallurgical Industries signed a cooperation protocol with the Ministry of Petroleum to settle their debts owed to the ministry by swapping plots of land.
