Cairo – Mubasher: The Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will convene on Thursday for its last meeting for 2018.
Analysts and investment bank chiefs told Mubasher that they expect the CBE to keep interest rates unchanged, citing two major factors for these projections.
In mid-November, the MPC kept interest rates unchanged at 16.75% for overnight deposit and 17.75% for overnight lending.
It is worth noting that Egypt’s annual inflation dropped to 15.6% in November from 26.7% in the same period of 2017, according to data by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Month-on-month, prices fell 0.7% in November.
Earlier this week, EFG Hermes’ head of macroeconomic analysis Mohamed Abou Basha told Mubasher that he expects the CBE to maintain interest rates as inflation was within the CBE’s target of 13% (+/-3%).
He also predicted the ‘hold’ decision until the end of the fourth quarter of 2019, although the government would continue to reduce subsidies on fuel and electricity in the meantime.
