(AFP Photo)
Reuters – Egypt’s pound weakened against the dollar at a central bank dollar sale on Wednesday for the third time in four auctions.
The central bank sold $38.3m to banks with a cut-off price of EGP 6.9624, down from Monday’s EGP 6.9575. It had offered $40m.
Dollar shortages have been fuelling a thriving black market. A trader on the parallel market said the dollar traded at EGP 7.39 earlier this week.
The pound has been under pressure during three years of political turmoil. Egypt’s foreign currency reserves stood at about $17.42bn in March, central bank governor Hisham Ramez said on Tuesday. This compares with $36bn before the uprising that led to President Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow in 2011.
The central bank introduced dollar currency sales more than a year ago. In January, it held a $1.5bn exceptional auction, its largest, to restock the market with dollars and curb unofficial currency trading.
