Yasser Zaazaa, Managing Director of the Egyptian Central Securities Depository (ECSD), has revealed that the company is ready for the linking process with Euroclear, explaining that discussions between the Ministry of Finance and the Belgium-based financial services company have resumed.
Egypt signed an agreement with Euroclear in late 2019 to pave the way for the settlement of its domestic debt in Europe, with the aim of making Egyptian bonds accessible to foreign investors, who currently can only access the market through a small number of local banks.
Zaazaa told Daily News Egypt that the company is working on the second stage of its launch, which is to handle treasury bills issuance instead of the Central Bank by the end of next August, after it had started the bond clearing and settlement activity instead of Misr for Central Clearing, Depository and Registry (MCDR) earlier this week.
He added to the Daily News Egypt that any government financial instruments will be processed by the ECSD, especially the activity of sovereign sukuk, if it is offered inside Egypt, and the secondary market.
The ECSD was established with the aim of registering, depositing and settling government debt instruments with an authorized capital of one billion pounds, with an ownership structure distributed between the Central Bank by 70% and the Ministry of Finance by 30%.
The ECSD aims to manage deposit and settlement operations for all government debt instruments through a unified legal entity operating in accordance with international standards.
The company carries out the operations of registering and depositing these papers and instruments after the Central Bank conducts the auction in the first market (the issuance market), provided that the registration and deposit process includes all data and information related to the issuance of the government paper or financial instrument and the data of the registered owner and the beneficial owner of each government paper or financial instrument.
