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Cairo metro drowns in debt, risks shutdown

The Cairo metro system owes vast sums to electrical, water and maintenance companies, and this week's move to double the price of a ticket to about $0.11 a ride isn't enough to solve the debt problem.
Commuters are seen inside Sadat metro station underneath Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, June 17, 2015. Egypt reopened a vital downtown Cairo metro station on Wednesday after a two-year closure, signalling government confidence in the security situation regardless of a series of low-level attacks in the capital. Located underneath Tahrir Square, a symbol of the popular uprising that toppled veteran leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the Sadat metro station is one of the largest and most central stations in Cairo.
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The specter of accumulated debts is haunting Cairo’s metro, putting Egypt's most popular means of transportation in jeopardy.

Hit by a severe cash crunch, the state-run Egyptian Company for Metro Management and Operation failed to pay huge water and electricity bills worth about 300 million Egyptian pounds ($16.6 million) for the past 18 months. Compounding the problem is that water and power companies have warned that they will halt their services if these bills are not paid. Between the hammer of these outstanding debts and the anvil of hefty annual losses, the three-line metro network is struggling to curb its budget deficit.

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