Egyptian Petroleum Minister backs agreement with Centamin

11th Jan 2013 16:45

Egypt´s Petroleum Minister, Osama Kamal, is last night reported to have defended the country´s profit-sharing agreement with Centamin, the FT Alphaville blog comments today. In response to a question about the verdict, he is reported to have said that people, "misunderstood. You can't cancel an agreement by a law. What was cancelled is a contract because the signed contract was not delivered to the court which did not ask for it. We/MOP are now appealing and everything will be fine."More significantly, he defended the agreement as good and a good model to replicate, explaining that Egypt could not go it alone, to spend more than $430m and then find nothing. "The risk is too high and the investments are too high. The experience is not built yet. Egypt is not yet ready to do mining alone," he said. Finally, he indicated that his Ministry is appealing the Court decision and that everything will be fine. Shares of Centamin finished the session higher by 9.1%, at 55.8p.AB