Egyptian Investment Minister Yehya Hamed said on Monday he aimed to boost Egypt’s anaemic economic growth to as high as 7 percent in two years by improving the environment for private investors. He said he would work out reconciliation agreements with business people who had fled abroad or were suffering legal problems since the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Egypt’s economy was grow

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) will likely hold an auction to sell dollars to local banks before 30 June, a senior banking source told Al-Masry Al-Youm, the day on which mass protests will demand early presidential elections.

The planned protests, which have also called for President Mohamed Morsy’s departure from power, could cause the price of the dollar to rise.

The exchange market and the black market are anxiously anticipating demonstrations as they seek to capitalise on gains from the expected rise of the dollar against the Egyptian pound.

On Monday, the CBE invited a tender to sell US$40 billion to local banks. Tenders were first used by the CBE in December following unprecedented surges in the value of the dollar against the pound in exchange markets, a phenomenon that negatively impacted dollar liquidity.

Bankers say that, as the scheduled protests approach, black market traders are anticipating exactly when an upwardly mobile dollar would benefit them most. However traders are also wary that the CBE could inject an additional supply of dollars onto the market.

Meanwhile, Bassant Fahmy, a banking expert, said that the CBE no longer needs to inject more dollars to bolster the Egyptian pound’s value, a strategy that would squander currency reserves.

The price of the pound against the dollar should be determined by the laws of supply and demand, she added.

Foreign currency reserves climbed from $14.4 billion in April to $16 billion in May, marking the highest monthly increase since the January 2011 revolution.

Mohamed al-Abyad, chairman of the exchange sector at Egypt’s Federation of Chambers of Commerce, said that black market traders exploit bouts of political tension to raise the price of the dollar while creating manufactured demand for it.

However, Abyad does not expect the price of the dollar to rise in anticipation of the protests because traders are too fearful that the CBE will inject an additional supply of dollars to the market.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

Finance Minister Fayyad Abdel Moneim said Monday that customs revenues hit LE14.15 billion between July 2012 and May 2013.

LE1.019 billion of that figure had been accumulated in May alone, he said in a statement, with sales taxes on imports producing LE2.2 billion.

Revenues included LE507 million on goods and raw materials, of which LE218.9 million was collected last month. Dumping duties also accounted for LE12.7 million, with a further LE392.7 million pounds in tobacco taxes, LE111 million in fines and seizures and LE13.1 billion in duties on imports.

Customs Director Fouad al-Khabaty said the last week of May achieved the highest revenues in total, raising LE312.8 million.

The third week of May produced LE306 million, preceded by LE236 million in the second and LE164 million in the first.

Edited translation from MENA

Oil prices rose Monday ahead of a critical meeting of U.S. central bank policymakers later in the week.
Benchmark oil for July delivery rose 28 cents to $98.14 a barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The contract for July delivery rose $1.16 to close at $97.85 a barrel on the Nymex amid concerns about a possible escalation in Syria’s civ

Egypt’s government is in the late stages of verifying its economic reform programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before obtaining a $4.8 billion IMF loan, its central bank governor said on Saturday.

The loan, needed to help stabilise Egypt’s balance of payments and state finances, has been under discussion for two years but agreement has repeatedly been postponed by political unrest in the country and the government’s reluctance to commit to austerity measures.

“The IMF is verifying numbers with the government regarding the programme and they are in late stages of verifying all the numbers,” central bank governor Hisham Ramez told reporters after a meeting of regional central bank chiefs in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.

There have been no changes to the plan or the amount of aid the country is seeking, he added.

“The programme is as it was planned by the Egyptian government. It is $4.8 billion that they have been talking to them about.”

He said he could not offer any estimate for when the talks would finish, adding that as far as he knew, there were no talks underway with other countries for Egypt to obtain fresh financial aid in the form of deposits in its central bank.

Last month, the IMF’s Deputy Managing Director Nemat Shafik told Reuters that the Fund was ready to sign the loan agreement with Egypt before or after the next parliamentary elections, but it was up to the government to move forward.

The IMF expects Egypt’s budget deficit to widen to 11.3 percent of gross domestic product in the fiscal year which ends in June, the largest gap since 2002, from 10.7 percent in the previous year, it said in a regional outlook published in May.

Egypt’s central bank foreign currency reserves stand at $16 billion, Ramez said, referring to the latest published number. The reserves rose for a second consecutive month in May, boosted by deposits from Qatar.

“I’ll be happy only if the reserves grow by the economy and not deposits,” Ramez said when asked if he was comfortable with the level of reserves now.

Qatar deposited $3 billion at the central bank on May 9, but the bank sold about $800 million two weeks later in a special foreign exchange auction to help importers pay for essential imports.

“Our direct intervention with exceptional auctions in April and May had a big effect on inflation,” Ramez said.

Asked whether it eased pressure on the central bank to tighten monetary policy, he said: “You can see from the numbers that it (inflation) is better than expected.” He declined to give any inflation forecasts.

Egyptian inflation edged up to 8.2 percent in the year to May, boosted by food prices and a weaker currency.

Asked about Morgan Stanley Capital International’s warning this week that Egypt could eventually be excluded from the MSCI Emerging Market Index used by many international fund managers, because of investors’ difficulties in repatriating money, Ramez said: “They were talking about the availability of foreign currency.”

“From our side, we opened the Repatriation Fund in March for any funds coming into stocks or the fixed income side. So anything that comes can go out at any point, there’s no problem.”

In March, the central bank opened a scheme giving foreign investors in the stock and government debt markets access to dollars despite severe shortages of foreign currency.

Egypt’s bourse tumbled to an 11-month low on Wednesday after MSCI’s warning.

The International Monetary Fund said that despite the recent gains in paring the deficit, the US government’s long-term debt profile remained unsustainable.

The IMF said the government needs to enact fresh income measures, including a value-added tax and a carbon tax, to strengthen its finances over the long term.
The Fund, in its annual report on the US economy, noted that the US govern

Revenues from Egypt’s Suez Canal rose 1 percent in May from a year earlier to $438.1 million, the State Information Portal said on Thursday.

In May 2012 the figure was $434.6 million, while in April 2013 it was $406.1 million.

The waterway is one of the country’s main sources of foreign currency, along with tourism, oil and gas exports and remittances from Egyptians living abroad.

On May 1, Egypt raised the fees paid by ships passing through the Suez Canal in an effort to boost revenue as the economy struggles to fend off a currency crisis.
 

Egypt’s central bank sold $38.8 million to banks in a foreign exchange auction on Monday, with the cut-off price edging up to 6.9809 Egyptian pounds to the dollar.
The cut-off price at Thursday’s auction was 6.9790 pounds.
The central bank has slowed the speed of the pound’s fall over the last three weeks, and currency dealers say it seems reluctant to allow it to weaken beyond the psycholog

Egypt’s central bank sold $39.8 million to banks in a foreign exchange auction on Thursday, with the cut-off price edging up to 6.9790 Egyptian pounds to the dollar.The cut-off price at Wednesday’s auction was 6.9774 pounds.The central bank has slowed the speed of the pound’s fall over the last three weeks, and currency dealers say it seems reluctant to allow it to weaken beyond the psycholog

Kuwaiti telecommunications provider Zain says it will set up a holding company for its Iraq operations as it prepares to sell a stake in the division to the public.Zain says it is offering 55.9 million shares in the new Al-Khatem Telecommunications Company beginning Tuesday. It says this is a procedural step ahead of the stock market listing.Zain is one of three telecoms that acquired Iraqi operat