Cairo, (Business News Report)|| Foreign exchange reserves in Egypt continued to rise for the 20th consecutive month, to record $40.98 billion.
The Central Bank of Egypt said that its foreign exchange reserves rose by the end of last January, after they were $40.935 billion in December 2021.
The bank also announced, last month, that foreign exchange reserves in December rose from $40.909 billion in November.
Foreign exchange reserves in Egypt have been rising since June 2020 after declining to about $36 billion from more than $45.5 billion due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The stimulus plan launched by the Egyptian government in March of 2020, in the context of facing the repercussions of the Coronavirus pandemic, caused the cash reserve to plunge to about $40 billion during the 2019/2020 fiscal year, to rise again during the 2020/21 fiscal year.
The Central Bank of Egypt decided to fix interest rates for the tenth time in a row during the first meeting of the monetary policy committee of the bank in 2022 last Thursday, which came in line with expectations, to settle at 8.25% for deposits, and 9.25% for lending.
Target inflation rate
The monetary policy committee of the bank said, in a statement, that it decided that the basic interest rates at the central bank are appropriate at the present time, and are consistent with the bank’s target inflation rate of 7% (± 2 percentage points) on average during the fourth quarter of 2022.
The committee stated that the annual general urban inflation rate rose to 5.9% in December 2021 from 5.6% in November 2021, resuming its upward trend since May 2021.
The upward trend of inflation was driven by the negative effects of the base period resulting from the decline in inflation rates in the second half of 2020, as well as the rise in global prices of commodities, in addition to many measures to control the state’s public finances.
The annual general inflation rate rose in December 2021 in particular, as a result of the decline in tomato prices at a rate greater than their seasonal pace during the month of December 2020, according to the committee.
