IMF approves $820m as part of Egypt bailout

WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund announced the immediate disbursement of $820-million to the Egyptian government, part of an augmented plan to aid the nation's stumbling economy.

The IMF's Executive Board validated the payment as part of a $3-billion aid program granted at the end of 2022.

The IMF action, repeatedly postponed and eagerly awaited by the Egyptian government, arrives at a time of mounting difficulties for its economy.

The Board also approved a $5-billion extension announced at the beginning of the month, bringing the Fund's total lending to Egypt to $8 billion.

In a news release, the IMF said that the Egyptian government has achieved all the objectives set out in the first two stages of the aid program, with the exception of the level of its foreign currency reserves.

"The authorities have significantly strengthened the reform package," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in the release.

"Recent measures toward correcting macroeconomic imbalances, including unification of the exchange rate... and significant tightening of monetary and fiscal policies, were difficult, but critical steps forward," she added.

Earlier this month, Egypt's central bank raised rates by six percentage points to 27.75 percent to combat inflation and bring the official exchange rate closer to the black market rate, causing the Egyptian pound to plunge 40 percent in one day, following a 50 percent fall over the last few months.

Nearly two-thirds of Egypt's 106 million inhabitants live below or just above the poverty line, and the country is facing a drop in foreign currency earnings, whether from tourism -- hit by the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine and now the war in the Gaza Strip -- or problems along the Suez Canal.

Attacks by Yemen's Huthi rebels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have reduced dollar revenues from the canal, a crucial passage for world trade, by 40-50 percent since the start of the year, the IMF said.

Since taking power in 2013, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has embarked on a series of megaprojects which, economists believe, have not generated new revenues but severely limited the state's financial capacity.

Between 2013 and 2022, Egypt's foreign debt rose from $46 billion to more than $165 billion, according to World Bank data, making it the second country most at risk of default behind war-torn Ukraine.However, the IMF is fairly optimistic for the coming fiscal year, forecasting economic growth will rise 4.4 percent, compared with 3 percent for the current fiscal year ending June 30.IMF approves $820m as part of Egypt bailout

Read More........ → April 01, 2024

Dubai Company Buys Used Cooking Oil to Turn Into Biofuel for Cars Citywide to Reduce CO2 Emissions

Used cooking oil collection truck and one of the biofuel production plants – Credit: Lootah Biofuels

A Dubai-based company Lootah Biofuels is producing biodiesel from used cooking oil bringing sustainable transportation options to a major oil-producing country. The result is a fuel that is less expensive, renewable, and clean. The United Arab Emirates company now boasts having their own fuel outlets across the city of Dubai, delivering 60 million liters annually. It is the brainchild of Yousif Bin Saeed Al Lootah, who wants the UAE to be the first nation in the region to mandate that biofuels blends be featured alongside other fuel in all public stations. They pay for the used cooking oil collected, thus giving an incentive to providers like restaurants, bakeries, and food chains, which provide 500,000 liters of waste oil every month. The company says it converted the waste oil into 770 tons of biofuel last year. The Lootah Biofuels website reports that used cooking oil has the highest carbon saving ratio amongst all the available biodiesel feedstock—and calculates their product has caused the reduction of 500 million tons of CO2, so far.MORE RENEWABLE GOOD NEWS: United Dubai Company Buys Used Cooking Oil to Turn Into Biofuel for Cars Citywide to Reduce CO2 Emissions

Read More........ → March 30, 2024

A Coal Billionaire Is Building the World’s Biggest Clean Energy Plant to Power 16 Million Homes in India

Bhadla Solar Park in Gujarat, seen from ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-2, satellite, will pale in comparison to Khavda when it’s completed

The Khavda solar and renewables park in a barren salt pan in India’s state of Gujarat is going to be big; really, really big.

Its aim is for 30 gigawatts—as much as the national grid of Switzerland. It will sprawl out across an area of lifeless desert five times the size of Paris costing $20 billion, and generate enough to power 16 million Indian homes.

In fact, this one renewables farm is estimated to provide 9% of the entire Indian renewable portfolio by 2070 when it finishes in a few years. The project involves solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage.

“A region so large, a region that is so unencumbered, there’s no wildlife, there’s no vegetation, there’s no habitation. There is no better alternative use of that land,” said Sagar Adani, the executive behind all the powers and departments making the project possible.

Nephew to India’s second-richest man, Adani is the executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) a subsidiary of the Adani Group, India’s largest coal-power owner-investor.

It’s inspiring to see a family that has a net worth of $100 billion directing its resources, both corporate and personal, to a project of the scale of Khavda, which is set to be the largest renewable power plant on Earth.

The Adani Group plans to invest $100 billion into energy transition over the next decade, with 70% of the investments earmarked for clean energy, according to CNN.

In 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged that India would achieve net zero emissions by 2070, and the scale of the Khavda project is likely to be music to his ears.

India bulls see the economic future of the subcontinent as one of perhaps unprecedented growth, with 6% annualized expansion, and 600 million people entering the middle and upper-income brackets in the next 10 years alone.

Such flourishing requires energy, and the demand in the country for air conditioning alone is expected to overtake all of Africa by 2050.On such a scale, it’s unsurprising that Sagar Adani has stopped reading and calculating numbers on the Khavda plant—they’re too big and too abstract, he says, and it sounds like that’s how it ought to be if India is going to avoid the worst of 1.5°C of warming. A Coal Billionaire Is Building the World’s Biggest Clean Energy Plant to Power 16 Million Homes in India

Read More........ → March 26, 2024