The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) received the first portion of a loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB), Thursday, a value of $500m, CBE Governor Tarek Amer told Daily News Egypt.
The CBE awaits the first portion of the loan agreed upon with the World Bank, which will be worth $1bn, to support the foreign exchange reserves. Amer had previously said that the first portion of the World Bank’s loan may take some time.
In December, Egypt obtained the World Bank’s and the AfDB’s approval to receive two loans worth a total of $4.5, provided over three years, where $3bn would be provided by the World Bank and $1.5bn by AFDB.
Foreign exchange reserves require dollar liquidity as a form of urgent support with the beginning of the new year, where reserves are facing numerous challenges, particularly during January 2016. Some of the challenges include repaying installments of external debts and the CBE’s attempts to cover the local demand for dollars.
In January, the CBE will be repaying its first installment of Paris Club debts during 2016, worth $700m. It is planned that the dues of the dollar bonds bought by Qatar will be repaid with a value estimated at $1bn.
Amer said the CBE’s commitment to these obligations will be parallelised with maintaining its foreign exchange reserves to cover costs of commodity imports for at least three months. Foreign exchange reserves increased from $16.422 in November 2015 to $16.445m in December 2015, recording an increase of $23m.
