CBE governor: stability of exchange rate no longer CBE target

CAIRO – 31 October 2017: The Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) main job now is to increase inflows of foreign currency, “stabilizing the exchange rate is no longer our target,” CBE governor Tarek Amer said Tuesday.

Speaking at a press conference organized by the Canada Egypt Business Council, Amer said that Egypt’s economic growth was able to increase over the fiscal year 2016/17 to five percent, “despite the challenges and difficulties Egypt faced during that year,” he said.

“Egypt is now among the five fastest growing emerging economies in the world, and that happened at a time when the CBE was implementing restrictive economic policies to curb inflation,” Amer said, attributing this to the flexibility of the economy.

Amer was firm that the economic measures taken over the previous fiscal year didn’t negatively affect businesses. “We for example have some companies that have seen profits rise by 40-50 percent,” the governor said.

The governor said that the economic reform measures caused 34-35 percent hikes in foreign currency inflows. “We were able to put Egypt back on the investment map,” he said.

Trying to convince attending representatives of the private sector in the conference, Amer said that Egypt has succeeded in attracting foreign currencies and addressing the deficit in the balance of payments.

“Remittances and tourism revenues were the main source of inflows in the past years, but now we want to go beyond that and diversify foreign currency resources,” Amer said.