By Omar Ghannam and Mohamed Ramadan. Published by the Arab Reform Initiative in partnership with Women for Justice Foundation, as part of the Egypt Policy Dialogues series. August 2026.
Under pressure from the economic crisis and persistent IMF demands to accelerate privatisation, Egypt turned to selling public assets, and Gulf sovereign wealth funds became the main source of the US dollars the government needed between 2022 and 2024. This paper analyses these recent Gulf acquisitions from an economic and institutional perspective.
It highlights the fundamental challenges facing their governance: a lack of transparency in announced deals, and weak oversight by regulators, the judiciary, parliament and other institutions that should protect public funds. The authors examine how the assets were priced, the legal and regulatory gaps that let concerns over transparency, concentration and monopoly go unaddressed, and the long-term developmental impact of these deals on the Egyptian economy, challenging the assumption that privatisation and foreign investment automatically amount to structural reform.
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