Egypt is considering temporarily reintroducing a stamp duty on stock market transactions, two Finance Ministry sources said on Thursday. "We are studying temporarily re-imposing a stamp duty on stock market transactions pending the return to a capital gains tax, which has been postponed since May 2015," sources said, without revealing when the stamp duty would be reinstated. “We are now looking at the volumes and values of stock market transactions to make it fair.” “The tax rate will be much higher than it was previously, which was 1 pound per 1,000.” Egypt imposed a stamp duty on buyers and sellers in May 2013, collecting more than EGP350mn in revenue before the levy was replaced in July 2014 by a 10% capital gains tax. Egypt then suspended the capital gains tax in May 2015 for two years, and the Higher Investment Council last year extended the suspension of capital gains tax for three years, until 2020. The comments come a day after the IMF released the details of its USD12bn, three-year funding facility to Egypt, including a commitment to imposing either a capital gains tax or a stamp duty on stock market transactions by the FY17/18. (Reuters)