CAIRO: The regulator of Egypt's stock market says the resumption of trading has been put off by three more days. The regulator says the market will reopen Wednesday, instead of Sunday, as initially anticipated. Saturday's statement said more consultations with brokers and companies are needed. The exchange was closed Jan. 28, three days after the outbreak of an uprising that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In the two days before the closure, the market's benchmark EGX30 index had dropped almost 17 percent. The crisis has rattled international investors, prompting an exodus of foreign funds and raising worries about sharp fluctuations when the market reopens. Communications and banking services have largely been restored. $1.1b in Treasury bills Egypt's central bank is offering 6.5 billion pounds ($1.1 billion) in Treasury bills, its first such auction since Mubarak ceded control of the country to the military. The central bank is offering Sunday three billion pounds in three-month bills and 3.5 billion in 266-day bills. It had auctioned 3.5 billion pounds in T-bills Thursday, days after it sold 13 billion in bills to raise additional funds for the country as it wrestled with its worst political crisis in three decades. Separately, the head of EgyptAir, the national carrier, said the company had lost 80 percent of its forecast revenues over the past three weeks after canceling 75 percent of its flights. Hussein Masoud, however, did not provide a figure.
