12:08
Thursday 22 December 2022
I wrote – Manal Al-Masry:
Today, Thursday, the Central Bank will hold the last periodic meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, which has the task of regulating the interest rate during 2022.
According to the Central Bank’s website, the Monetary Policy Committee meets to vote on setting the interest rate and the committee includes 6 members led by Hassan Abdullah, Governor of the Central Bank.
The committee includes central bank deputy governor Gamal Negm and Rami Abul-Naga, financial control chief Mohamed Farid, and two experts, Ashraf El-Araby, former minister of planning, and Najla El-Ahwany, former minister of international cooperation .
The interest rate decision will be taken on the basis of the majority opinion at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.
During the meeting – before the interest rate decision is issued – current and expected data on the inflation rate, growth levels, the unemployment rate and the extent to which global economic conditions affect the Egyptian economy.
Today’s latest meeting of the Central Bank comes in the light of the expectations of bankers, economists and investment banks to raise the interest rate by 2% or to set and issue a certificate of 20% interest, with an increase in the reserve requirement on bank deposits.
During the current year, the Central Bank has held 7 meetings of the Monetary Interest Policy Committee prior to today’s one, including two extraordinary meetings in the months of March and October, in conjunction with the liberalization of the exchange rate.
The Central Bank raised its interest rate by 5% during the current year, setting its interest rate at 13.25% on deposits and 14.25% on loans.
And the last meeting of the Central Bank in which it decided to raise the interest rate by 2% last October 27 in an extraordinary meeting coinciding with the second wave of exchange rate liberalization and the first approval of the International Monetary Fund to disburse a loan to Egypt.
On Saturday, the board of directors of the International Monetary Fund definitively approved Egypt’s request for a loan of 3 billion dollars in tranches over a period of 46 months to finance the program of economic reforms to close the budget deficit and the funding gap.
