CAIRO: Central Bank of Egypt’s Governor Hisham Ramez signed an agreement Sunday with the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF,) by which the latter will lend Egypt $339 million to aid the structural reformation of the financial and banking sectors.
The loan aims to support the structural reformation program, which targets the strength of the financial sector through the growth of the sustainable and integrated economy.
The program also supports the efforts of the CBE to improve internal monitoring systems and implement governmental rules inside banking bodies.
“The total financial rank of the banks, aside of CBE, increased by about 2.2 trillion EGP ($281.26 billion) in June 2015, with an increase by 21 percent compared to the same month of the last year,” said Ramez.
In his speech in the 39th session of the Board of Arab Central Banks and Monetary institutions Sunday, Ramez mentioned that the unemployment rate decreased to 12.7 percent during the second quarter of 2015, compared to 13.3 percent at the same period in the last year, which he attributed to the health of some economic sectors, especially construction.
He noted that the economic reforms made by Egypt including the petroleum subsidies and issuing the new investment law resulted in increased investor confidence.
Ramez added that the growth rate of the gross domestic product increased by 3 percent during the third quarter of the fiscal year 2013/14, compared to 2.5 percent in the same quarter of the previous year, noting that economic growth reached 4.7 percent during the first nine months of FY 2014/15, compared to 1.7 percent during the same period of the previous year.