‘No foreign currency debt issuance has been planned in the short term’

Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich today reiterated a government’s communiqué released yesterday saying «any foreign currency debt issuance has been planned in the short term,» denying a newspaper’s report which indicated the country was closing in on a deal to receive around US$1 billion in loans from Goldman Sachs investment bank.
«There is a strategy to discredit the figures released by (Economy Minister) Kicillof regarding the GDP, which were published last week,” Capitanich went on.
In his daily press conference from the Government House he recalled the measurement of those figures is made according to “international standards” and «a final revision will be carried out in September.”
He furthermore referred to gasoline prices which will rise by 5% as of tomorrow and explained “hikes are caused by the impact of the foreign exchange variation and the costs of production” agreed in May.
buenosairesherald.com

Egypt’s presidential election to be held on May 26 and 27

Egypt will hold the first round of its presidential election on May 26 and 27, the country’s election committee said today.
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who deposed elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July, is widely expected to win the election.
But the Islamist opposition views him as the mastermind of a coup.
Sisi was seen as the most influential figure in an interim administration that has been cracking down hard on Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and other opponents in the last nine months. The Brotherhood, Egypt’s best organised political party until last year, has been banned and driven underground.
The vote will go to a second round in June if the first-placed candidate does not by a wide enough margin. The organising committee did not say what this margin was during a televised news conference.
Sisi is widely expected to win comfortably. He enjoys solid support from privately- and state-run media.
So far, the only other candidate for the presidency is leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, who came third in the 2012 election won by Morsi.
Sisi stepped down as defence minister and army chief in order to announce his candidacy last Wednesday.
Candidates may conduct their election campaigns between May 3 and May 23, the spokesman for the committee in charge of organising the elections said in a televised news conference.
buenosairesherald.com