The price of the dollar in Egypt fell to an all-time high against the Egyptian pound in late trading today, Wednesday. This comes at a time when the black market is facing heavy losses, as demand from importers and import companies has declined, after the government and central bank moved hard to supply dollars to importers through the market. official.
Data seen by Al-Arabiya.net showed the Egyptian pound rising against the dollar, to record the £29.6 level in volatile trades today, Wednesday, after crossing the £32 level earlier in the day , reducing his losses to just 8% in today’s trading.
Read more: Jefferies International: Demand for dollars will remain strong in Egypt
And as part of the Central Bank’s efforts, it recently decided to raise interest rates by 300 basis points as the pound falls against the dollar, followed by government banks Al-Ahly and Egypt offering savings certificates for one year with a yield of 25%.
And yesterday, on Tuesday, the Commercial International Bank (CIB) in Egypt offered a new savings certificate for an 18-month period, with an annual yield of 20%, payable monthly, or 22.5% payable on the date certificate expiration.
In dollar exchange terms, it was registered with the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, at a level of £32.11 in buys, compared to £32.15 in sales. In the Egyptian Export Development Bank, the dollar’s exchange rate reached £31.85 in buying, compared to £31.9 in selling.
The dollar exchange rate at the National Bank of Egypt exceeded 31.65 pounds, and at Banque Misr it reached the level of 31 pounds.
Since March of last year, the Central Bank of Egypt has begun to move intensively to contain the crisis of shortage of dollars. In order to narrow the gap between the dollar exchange rates on the official market and on the black market, he announced 3 sharp reductions in the value of the Egyptian currency against the US dollar.
The start of the moves was during the extraordinary general meeting held on March 19 last year, when he announced that he would allow the dollar exchange rate to rise from the £15.77 level to around £19.64, so that the US dollar recorded gains of 24.5%.
As for the second decline, it arrived at the end of last October, when it was decided to bring the dollar exchange rate to the level of 24.25 pounds, to add new gains of 23.4% to the American paper. The latest reduction occurred during the first week of this year, when dollar exchange rates were moved to their current level of £27.70, so the dollar added another gains of 14.2%.
However, from the start of the moves in March last year to today’s trading, the US dollar’s exchange rate against the Egyptian pound jumped by 75.6%, gaining around £11.93 in less than 10 months.
But the whole crisis is due to the impact of the dollar shortage on import transactions. As regards the dossier of goods accumulated in Egyptian ports, data from the Egyptian Customs Authority indicate that goods worth 6.8 billion dollars were released last December. While the total value of goods stacked in Egyptian ports was about $14 billion.
This wave of releases caused importers’ demand for dollars to collapse via the parallel market, which confused the accounts of traders and hard currency speculators, driving black market dollar exchange rates down from the £38 level. before the International Monetary Fund announced approval of the financing package for Egypt, currently at around £30.
