The Central Bank of Egypt will hold a meeting tomorrow, Thursday, amid anticipation of what will be decided on interest rates in order to confront inflation, which is the time when the Egyptian pound faces severe pressures that may push it to decline further during the coming period.
Regarding this situation, a recent report from HSBC indicated that the dollar price would reach levels of EGP 35-40 in the coming months.
During the past hours, the non-deliverable futures contracts for the Egyptian pound continued their significant declines, according to Bloomberg data, as they reached unprecedented levels, as they crossed the 40-pound barrier against the dollar for a period of 12 months.
In the same regard, the pound continued its stability in banks operating in the banking sector, to record today 30.84 for purchase, and 30.95 for sale, in government and private banks.
HSBC had expected, earlier, that the price of the dollar would reach a level of 30-35 pounds during the current year, but it returned with the deterioration of the economic situation, expecting it to reach between 35-40 pounds in the coming months.
And before making a decision to devalue the pound last January and issue 28% certificates, the bank expected the pound to drop and the dollar to reach more than 30 pounds, which raises the pound’s price losses to 50%, in exchange for raising the gains of the US currency to more than 100%, which results in no Pressure on a sufficiently high import bill or lead to a sufficiently strong recovery in remittance flows immediately.
With regard to the interest rate meeting, expectations indicated that the Central Bank of Egypt will decide to raise the interest rate by 3% in its next meeting on Thursday.
It is noteworthy that the Bank expected in its January report a rise in the interest rate by 3%, or 300 basis points, during the first quarter of the year, making the nominal interest rate reach 19.75%.
Fitch Agency expects the “Fitch Solutions” agency to record the exchange rate of the pound against the dollar at 33 in the short term in the coming weeks, due to the rapid progress in selling state-owned assets by the second half of this year, in addition to the increase in foreign currency inflows, and the convergence between the exchange rate. the black market, and the worsening recession in the United States and the eurozone.
The agency expected that the International Monetary Fund program and the support of the Gulf Cooperation Council would help ease financing pressures, but this places a burden on those countries to advance their economies and change their policies.
