CAIRO - Egypt plans to sell shares in power plants it built in partnership with Germany's Siemens, a cabinet statement said on Wednesday.

The proposed offer on the Egyptian stock market is aimed at "maximizing the return on state-owned assets and refinancing state investments to ease the burden on the public budget", Ayman Soliman, head of Egypt's sovereign fund, was quoted as saying.

Egypt's minister for the public business sector, Hesham Tawfiq, last month told Reuters that an offering of stakes in four state-owned companies will be completed during the first half of 2022.

Siemens built three 4.8 gigawatt power plants in Egypt, beginning in 2015, at a total cost of $7 billion. Each of the three gas-fired plants was billed at the time as the biggest in the world.

 

(Reporting by Momen Said Attallah Writing by Ahmad Elhamy Editing by David Goodman)