{"id":44371,"date":"2013-04-02T16:19:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T18:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/escaesco.com.br\/lab\/anba\/egypt-aims-to-increase-international-reserves\/"},"modified":"2019-06-30T13:13:12","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T16:13:12","slug":"egypt-aims-to-increase-international-reserves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/egypt-aims-to-increase-international-reserves\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt aims to increase international reserves"},"content":{"rendered":"

São Paulo – Egypt aims to increase its international reserves to US$ 16 billion by late June. According to the Reuters<\/em> news agency, the information was disclosed by the country’s Planning and Cooperation Minister, Ashraf Al-Araby, in an interview to Al-Arabiya<\/em> TV, in Dubai, on Tuesday (2).<\/p>\n

The date is when the fiscal year ends in the country. The original forecast was for these reserves to total US$ 19 billion by then.<\/p>\n

According to Reuters<\/em>, the Egyptian foreign currency reserves were at US$ 13.5 billion in late February, less than half the value they had in 2011, when the people’s protests brought almost 30 years of the Hosni Mubarak regime to an end.<\/p>\n

The country is suffering with depreciation of the Egyptian pound and with loss of reserves. The current total is not enough to cover two months of imports, according to news agency Dow Jones<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It is in the face of this scenery that the Egyptians are awaiting, on Friday (3), arrival of a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) technical delegation whose objective is to progress with negotiations for a US$ 4.8 billion loan.<\/p>\n

Egypt and the Fund signed an agreement for this value in November last year, suspended in December by the Egyptian government due to protests. There was fear that unpopular measures, like the increase in taxes, could cause further instability.<\/p>\n

From then on, Egypt has made changes in its social, economic and financial reform programme, to be reintroduced to the IMF. After that, the institution’s director for the Middle East and Central Asia, Masood Ahmed, said to Dow Jones that the original lump sum agreed on could vary up or down, depending on the country’s needs and on the evaluation to be made by the Fund’s team.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian Planning minister declared that the plan includes the reduction of fuel subsidies, with stipulation of a quota, according to Dow Jones<\/em>. Starting on July 1st, consumption above this quota would have no subsidies.<\/p>\n

Apart from that, according to Araby, the government aims to reduce the country’s budget deficit from the current 10.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to 9.4% in 2014 and 8.5% in 2015. The Egyptians hope to come to an agreement with the IMF by late this month.<\/p>\n

Still according to Dow Jones<\/em>, the minister of Finance of Egypt, Al-Morsi Hegazi, stated that the country plans to call for financial support for Arab funds and financial institutions in the region. He added that this was one of the objectives of the visit promoted this week to Dubai.<\/p>\n

Hegazi stated that the country started negotiations for a new US$ 465 million Arab Monetary Fund loan. According to Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram<\/em>, the country has already received US$ 270 million from the Arab Fund and should soon receive another US$ 135 million due to a prior agreement.<\/p>\n

*Translated by Mark Ament<\/strong><\/p>\n

Press Release<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government aims to increase the total the country has in foreign currency from US$ 13.5 billion to US$ 16 billion by late June. An IMF delegation should arrive in Cairo on Wednesday. Total of the agreement may change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2316,"featured_media":185243,"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-44371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy"},"wps_subtitle":"The government aims to increase the total the country has in foreign currency from US$ 13.5 billion to US$ 16 billion by late June. An IMF delegation should arrive in Cairo on Wednesday. Total of the agreement may change.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44371","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=44371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}