The Egyptian Prime Minister refuses to sell the Suez Canal and describes the proposals as an attempt to mislead

Madbouly said, in a press conference on Thursday evening, that Hassan Heikal, who proposed the idea and was described in some media reports as an “adviser to the Prime Minister,” does not work as an advisor to the government, but is part of an advisory committee that includes people of different orientations and members of the most vehement opponents of the government, and they cannot be considered official advisors to the Prime Minister.

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He stressed that "the Suez Canal cannot be touched because it is one of the state's sovereign assets, and it is not possible to think about offering it or a percentage of it for barter," noting that some have the right to think about unconventional solutions to some of the problems facing the state, but he called for a distinction between personal diligence and the government's orientations.

He stated that the government issued a decisive statement in this regard, but was surprised the next day by the conclusion of statements by the Prime Minister talking about the channel’s exposure to losses. Some put it in the context of paving the way for the sale of the canal, stressing that these statements were two years old, coinciding with the Gaza war and the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea, which affected the revenues of the Suez Canal, and losses at that time were estimated at about 550 million dollars per month.

He continued: "There is an attempt to mislead public opinion, and old statements are being chopped up and invoked in malicious attempts to mislead public opinion. We are facing a relentless daily war to make citizens question everything that is happening in the state and create a state of dissatisfaction."

Last Sunday, the Egyptian government confirmed in a statement that what is being circulated regarding the transfer of ownership of some assets, including the Suez Canal, expresses the purely personal vision of its owner, and does not represent any direction or proposal adopted by the government.

The Egyptian Cabinet statement stressed “categorically” that “the Suez Canal is not the subject of any proposal of this kind, and the government has no intention of bartering, mortgaging, or transferring its ownership in exchange for debts.”

Heikal's proposal was based on what he described as a "micro-barter" that saw the settlement of the historical debts of the Egyptian Radio and Television Corporation "Maspero" towards the National Investment Bank, which amounted to more than 88 billion pounds, dating back to the 1980s. Heikal called for expanding the experiment to turn into a "major barter" in exchange for zeroing out the government's domestic debt.

While the Council of Ministers confirmed in its statement, “What was recently done regarding the settlement of the historical debts of the National Media Authority towards the National Investment Bank represents a financial and institutional treatment of a specific case, according to its legal and financial conditions and the nature of the assets and obligations between the two parties, and it may not be measured against it or considered as a general model for managing the state’s public debt.”