Cairo – Mubasher: The Central Bank of Egypt kept the Egyptian pound unchanged against the US dollar at its regular FX auction, two banking sources told Mubasher
The bank sold $120 million at an unchanged rate of 8.78 per dollar.
Egypt is facing an acute dollar shortage that sent its foreign reserves down to $16.564 billion at the end of August.
It had roughly $36 billion in reserves before an uprising in 2011 overthrew veteran ruler Hosni Mubarak. That ushered in a period of political turmoil that scared away tourists and foreign investors, key sources of foreign exchange.
The widening gap between official and black market rates for the dollar has increased pressure to devalue the currency.
Egypt has reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a $12 billion, three-year lending programme that it hopes will plug the nation's funding gap and restore market confidence, encouraging investment that could help to ease the currency crunch.
