Sources with the Egyptian government stated that no budget was allocated for electricity subsidies in Egypt starting from fiscal year 2018/2019. The country will not earmark the EGP 9b planned by the Ministry of Electricity for power subsidies during that period, reported Al Borsa.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Electricity plans to restructure selling-prices of power for domestic use, with the aim of increasing prices for high-consumption brackets in order to subsidies power to low income households with the generated additional income.

This comes on the heels of the IMF’s announcement that the $2.5b first tranche of the fund’s $12b loan will be made available to Egypt after the IMF’s executive board reviews the program, with the country’s funding package being presented  by the end of October or early November.

In older news, the Egyptian Electricity and Renewable Energy Minister, Mohamed Shaker, announced that Egypt was planning to increase electricity tariffs for both residential and commercial consumption. This increase in power prices aims to counter balance the rise in the cost of production from EGP 0.46 per 1kWh to EGP 0.63 per 1kWh.