Egypt received seven international and local offers to acquire shares in the National Company for Petroleum Products Marketing and Distribution (Wataniya). The winning bid is slated to be announced in the near future, Egypt’s Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said stated on Wednesday.

In May 2023, the government started receiving bids to purchase stakes in state-owned Wataniya. The company is one of 40 companies Egypt has listed for its initial public offering (IPO) programme. The deadline for receiving offers was February 2024.

Egypt is committed to reducing the government's footprint in the country’s economic activity for the private sector under the ongoing $8 billion loan deal programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In an interview with Asharq with Bloomberg, El-Said said that the government is currently working to "evaluate the offers and select the most suitable one" soon.

Established in 1993, Wataniya is fully owned by the National Service Projects Organization (NSPO) of the Armed Forces and has about 255 service and vehicle fuel stations, besides 20 stations under construction and 25 stations in the planning stage, according to the official website of the National Service Projects Organization.

Egypt will use the proceeds of the IPO sales to address the elevating debt level, which hit 96 percent of the country’s GDP in FY2022/2023 to drop to below 80 percent by the conclusion of the IMF loan programme in 2026.

To date, Egypt has managed to collect over $3 billion since March 2023 from state-owned companies sales under its privatization programme, preceded by $2.5 billion through the divestment of government assets in 2022.