Egypt markets in need of foreign currency

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi urged for more efforts to provide foreign currency to meet the needs of citizens in the Egyptian markets, state-run Ahram newspaper reported Wednesday.

Sisi's comments came during his meeting with Tarek Amer, the Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), after Amer reviewed the CBE's efforts that increased the cash reserve by more than one billion U.S. dollars in the past months.

"The CBE's policy is aimed at supporting the cash reserve to maintain the monetary stability in Egypt," Amer stressed.

He said the bank has recently decided to cancel a cap on foreign currency deposit, which helped increase the Egyptian banks' deposits tenfold while the economy has become more competitive in the foreign trade.

"The CBE has agreed with the Finance Ministry to launch offerings in international bond markets to strengthen the cash reserve and support the monetary policy, which will eventually help stabilize the prices and reduce the budget deficit," the CBE governor said during his meeting with Sisi.

Egyptian foreign currency has dropped from 36 billion U.S. dollars to 16.56 billion by the end of March, after the 2011 revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.

The North African country has been suffering economic recession over the past five years of political turmoil that led to declining tourism, low foreign currency reserves, devaluation of the Egyptian pound against the U.S. dollar and hence rising prices of food necessities, services and others.

According to the report, Amer also gave a presentation on the current measures to provide the foreign currencies to import medicine and its components and meet all needs of fuel and gas.

"All banks in Egypt managed, in cooperation with the CBE, to offer 33.7 billion dollars for imports to meet the needs of the Egyptian markets during the period from November 2015 to April 2016," he pointed out.

"The CBE has funneled about 15.69 billion dollars in exceptional and weekly bids

source : xinhua