The Egyptian economy is navigating a precarious tightrope, with soaring inflation squeezing household budgets and threatening economic stability. To combat this challenge, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) recently implemented a series of bold monetary measures. While these measures hold promise for long-term improvement, they also represent potential challenges in the short term.

In December 2022, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) board approved a $3 billion loan for Egypt. Under this agreement, Egypt is committed to boost its various sources of foreign currency to close the estimated financing gap of $17 billion. In this Factsheet, Arab Finance gives you a holistic view of the main sources of foreign currency inflows to Egypt and their performance in the second quarter (Q2) of the current fiscal year (FY).

The Egyptian markets have witnessed a commodities shortage over the past months due to the accumulation of goods at the ports. However, the government began to take measures to secure foreign currency, in order to gradually release the stuck goods at ports for the importance they set, prioritizing food commodities, food manufacturing components, medicines, and production requirements.

The sector has also covered other requests of local banks’ customers, which confirms the ability of the banking sector to cover the pending currency management requests for importers as soon as possible.