S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Talks between Egypt and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a US$ 4.8 billion loan to the country will continue in weeks to come, said the IMF director for the Middle East and Central Asia, Masood Ahmed, who travelled to Cairo last Sunday (17th).<\/p>\n
\u201cI welcome the authorities\u2019 determination to move forward with their economic reform program that seeks to address these challenges in a socially balanced manner,\u201d said Ahmed according to an IMF press release.<\/p>\n
The two parties reached an agreement last November, but the Egyptian government halted its implementation amidst popular protests in December. There is fear that the austerity measures advised on by the Fund, especially higher taxes, will cause further instability in the country.<\/p>\n
Ahmed\u2019s visit marked the resumption of negotiations. He said the Fund remains \u201ccommitted to support Egypt in this endeavour.\u201d \u201cWe agreed that our discussions would continue diligently over the coming weeks with the aim of reaching agreement on possible financial support from the IMF,\u201d he stated according to the release.<\/p>\n
Aside from Egypt\u2019s resistance in taking unpopular measures, another hurdle stands in the way of an agreement: the parliamentary elections scheduled for next month have been suspended by the Administrative Court. Meanwhile, the country needs cash to fund its national accounts. An IMF technical team will be in charge of discussions with Egypt in the next round of negotiations.<\/p>\n
In Cairo, Ahmed met with prime-minister Hisham Kandil, Central Bank governor Hisham Ramez, Finance minister Al Mursi Hegazy, and the minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Ashraf Al-Araby.<\/p>\n
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Fund\u2019s director Masood Ahmed travelled to Cairo last Sunday. The two parties are trying to overcome a stalemate on the US$ 4.8 billion loan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-economy"},"wps_subtitle":"The Fund\u2019s director Masood Ahmed travelled to Cairo last Sunday. The two parties are trying to overcome a stalemate on the US$ 4.8 billion loan.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}