WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund has received a loan request from Egypt and an IMF team will travel to Cairo to discuss conditions, a Fund spokeswoman said Thursday.
"There has now been an official request" from Egypt, IMF spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said in a news conference.
"The Egyptian authorities had indicated that they expected a financing need of some $10 to $12 billion from now through June 2012," Atkinson said.
"They have approached bilateral and multilateral partners, including the IMF, to provide the financial support for what is their homegrown program."
She said an IMF team is expected to visit Cairo "shortly" to discuss with Egyptian authorities the conditions for the aid.
Asked the amount of the loan sought by Egypt, the spokeswoman said: "We don’t have a specific number."
Last month Egypt’s finance minister, Samir Radwan, said the country was in talks with the IMF and the World Bank to secure loans worth roughly $6 billion.
"We are negotiating with the IMF for loans of between $3-4 billion and with World Bank for about $2.2 billion," Radwan said on April 26.
The Egyptian economy, heavily dependent on tourism, has been battered after a pro-democracy uprising that began in January ousted long-time president Hosni Mubarak.
Radwan estimated Egypt’s economy will have grow real growth of 2.0 percent this year and around four percent in 2012, while the budget deficit is estimated to hit as high as $10 billion next year.
The IMF forecast in April that Egypt’s gross domestic product growth would slow to 1.0 percent this year. But other estimates are more pessimistic, including that of The Institute of International Finance, which groups major banks in 70 countries, and sees GDP contracting by 2.5 percent.
Egypt has lost $2.27 billion in tourism revenues in the three months since the uprising, the government said Thursday.
Egypt has struggled to revive tourism since the revolt, which left most police stations torched and brought the military into the streets.
The country attracted about 15 million tourists last year, many of them visiting Red Sea resorts and ancient relics.
