CAIRO – Egypt's foreign currency reserves fell to $18.096 billion at the end of August from $18.534 billion the previous month, the central bank said on Monday. Reserves stood at about $36 billion before the 2011 revolt that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Meanwhile, Egypt will return to the international bond market in the first half of 2016, the country's finance minister said on Monday, taking advantage of its return to economic and political stability in the wake of the Arab Spring uprising of 2011. "We will go out to the international bond market in the second half of the financial year 2015-16, God willing," Hany Kadry Dimian told Reuters on the sidelines of a Euromoney conference. Egypt's financial year runs from July to June. The government conducted its first international bond sale in five years in June, selling $1.5 billion of 10-year bonds at a yield of 6% after receiving more than $4.5bn in investor orders. Foreign portfolio investors left the country en masse in 2011, freezing it out of the international debt market after an uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak. But economic growth has begun to pick up and state finances have strengthened since President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi took office last year. He has overseen the launch of economic reforms and forged an alliance with rich Gulf Arab states to obtain aid and investment. In another development, Egypt signed an agreement with a Chinese company on building and financing part of a planned new administrative capital east of Cairo, the investment minister told Reuters on Monday. The memorandum of understanding calls for China State Construction Engineering Corporation, also known as China Construction, to “study building and financing” the administrative part of the new capital, which will include ministries, government agencies and the president's office. Egypt had so far only highlighted the involvement of the UAE's Capital City Partners (CCP), which signed an initial agreement for the mega-project at a March economic summit. Egypt's housing minister in June acknowledged “complications” in contract negotiations with UAE businessman Mohamed Alabbar, the founding partner of CCP. — Reuters
