Weak revenue, combined with poorly targeted subsidies and a growing public sector wage bill, resulted in large deficits and high levels of public debt. The IMF released on Wednesday Egypt’s country report, which includes details of the Egyptian reform programme, as well as the IMF staff’s detailed studies on the outlook, and challenges facing the programme. The main pillars of the economic reform programmeAccording to the IMF staff report, the Egyptian reform programme can be summarised into several main elements. Attempts to manage the exchange rate could lead to a loss of reserves or the re-emergence of a large parallel market. Failure to tighten monetary policy sufficiently could lead to a strong exchange rate, inflationary pressures, and a loss of reserves.

Source: Daily News Egypt January 19, 2017 06:13 UTC