Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) governor Tarek Amer pledged to provide the needed US dollar cash resources to import a number of basic commodities.
The goal is to build a stock of these commodities for approximately six months.
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi demanded the government increase the supply of certain commodities, particularly essential ones, in an attempt to control the prices that have inflated over the last period.
The August inflation rate registered about 14.8%, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects it to jump to 18% during the current fiscal year.
Amer’s pledge came during his meeting with the Prime Minister Sherif Ismail and the minister of supply on Tuesday. Ismail said that the government is insisting on executing the urgent plan for building a six- month stock of the basic food commodities.
According to a statement by the cabinet: “The urgent plan aims at meeting citizens’ needs, controlling markets, and maintaining price stability.”
The statement said that the US dollar resources the CBE will provide will be directed to importing meats, rice, food oil, wheat, sugar, and poultry.
It agreed to import 200,000 tonnes of oil and 60,000 tonnes of frozen meat to equally distributed over the six months. Also to be imported is 4m tones of wheat and 500,000 tonnes of rice and 400,000 tonnes of sugar.
