CAIRO: Egypt's central bank held the pound steady against the dollar at its regular foreign currency sale on Tuesday while the currency weakened on the black market.
The bank sold $119.1 million at an unchanged rate of 8.78 per dollar.
Egypt is facing an acute dollar shortage that sent its foreign reserves down to $16.564 billion at the end of August.
Egypt had roughly $36 billion in reserves before an uprising in 2011 overthrew Hosni Mubarak.
That ushered in a period of political turmoil that scared away tourists and foreign investors, key sources of foreign exchange.
A widening gap between official and black market rates for the dollar has increased pressure to devalue the currency. One black market trader said he was selling dollars at 12.8 per dollar, weaker than the 12.77 quoted on September 6.
He gave no indication of trade volumes.
Egypt has reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund over a $12 billion, three-year lending programme that it hopes will plug the nation's funding gap and restore market confidence, encouraging investment that could help to ease the currency crunch.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.