Army leaders who took over from Mubarak in February last year have faced street protests and widespread demands that they hand power to civilians sooner than the end-June deadline they had set themselves.

“Presidential elections begin in the first week of June and the president will be sworn in by the end of June,” committee member Ahmed Shams El-Din told Reuters.

“Any run-offs will take place within the month of June, and by July we will have an Egyptian president,” he said. Similar reports about the timing were carried in state-run newspapers on Sunday. The judicial committee is due to hold a news conference later on Sunday to announce the official timetable.

Officials said this month that nominations for the race would be accepted from March 10, suggesting the generals may have accelerated their planned handover of power. Some politicians had pushed for a vote in May or earlier.

Under new rules approved in a referendum last year, presidents will be limited to two consecutive four-year terms.

Mubarak was ousted shortly before the end of his fifth six-year term. Most of his terms were secured via single-candidate referendums. In 2005 he ran in the nation’s first multi-candidate race, but rights groups and others said the rules for that race blocked any realistic challenge to the incumbent.

Meanwhile, the state media reported Sunday that Egypt's finance minister will sign a memorandum of understanding with the International Monetary Fund in March for a previously spurned $3.2 billion loan.

The official Al-Ahram newspaper quoted Finance Minister Mumtaz Al-Said as saying that an IMF delegation will visit Cairo next month to sign the agreement for the three-phase loan.

"The interest rate on the loan is 1.2 percent, and it will be used to support the budget for 2012-2013," he said.

The loan will be paid in three installments, the first as soon as the agreement is signed, he added.

Egypt had turned down the loan last year, saying it did not want to add to its foreign debt, but reconsidered as its economy plummeted and much of the promised aid from Arab and Western donors did not materialise.

In January, the head of an IMF mission to Egypt ruled out imposing conditions on Cairo for the loan.

Egypt is facing a budget deficit of 144 billion Egyptian pounds (about $24 billion) which analysts expect to deepen as the country continues to feel the aftershocks of the uprising last year.