“No floating, slowing inflation, and fixing interest”.. 3 surprises about the Egyptian economy

A state of anticipation prevails among many businessmen and businessmen, especially investors, awaiting the outcome of the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank, on Thursday, May 18th.

Low rate of inflation

  A number of experts suggested that the central bank would move to fix the interest rate at the same indicators that it announced during its previous meeting in March of this year, especially in light of several reports that revealed that there is no benefit from moving interest rates in light of the high inflation wave facing the world.

8 meetings

According to the announced schedule of the Central Bank's meetings for this year, there are 8 meetings that will be held during 2023; The date for the third meeting will be on May 18, 2023, and the fourth meeting will be followed on the 22nd of June, and thus the Central Bank will hold about 4 meetings in the first half of the year.

The fifth meeting will be held on August 3, 2023, the sixth meeting on September 21, 2023, the seventh meeting on November 2, 2023, and the eighth and final meeting on December 21.

Monetary Policy Committee

The Monetary Policy Committee operating at the Central Bank of Egypt decided, in its first meeting held on Thursday, February 2nd, to keep the rates of the overnight deposit and lending return and the price of the main operation of the Central Bank at the level of 16.25%, 17.25% and 16.75%, respectively. The credit and discount rate was fixed at 16.75%.

The second central bank meeting came on Thursday, March 30, in which the central bank decided to raise the rates of the deposit and lending return for one night and the price of the main operation of the central bank by 200 basis points, which is equivalent to 2%, to reach 18.25%, 19.25% and 18.75%, respectively.

For the first of 10 months, the annual inflation rate for the entire republic slowed down last April to 31.5%, compared to 33.9% last March, according to a statement from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics on Wednesday.

The annual urban inflation rate during April was 30.6%, compared to 32.7% in March.

Interest rate fixation

Ashraf Ghorab, an economist, said that despite the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates by 25 basis points and continuing to pursue this policy to reduce US inflation rates despite the wave of bankruptcies suffered by US banks, it is expected that the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Egypt will proceed in its next meeting. By fixing the interest rate, especially after the data of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, which indicated a decline in the annual inflation rate during last April in Egypt, to record 31.5%, compared to 33.9% in the previous March.