{"id":25497,"date":"2023-04-27T03:09:13","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T03:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/egypts-economy-seen-growing\/"},"modified":"2023-04-27T03:09:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T03:09:26","slug":"egypts-economy-seen-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/egypts-economy-seen-growing\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt’s economy seen growing 4% this fiscal year as currency weakens- Reuters poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Werr<\/p>\n

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s economy will grow 4.0% this fiscal year and 4.5% next even as it endures a continuing depreciation in its currency, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday, in line with a government forecast for the current year.<\/p>\n

The country’s already vulnerable economy was shaken further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which rocked tourism, raised commodity prices and prompted foreign investors to pull about $20 billion out of its financial markets.<\/p>\n

Those troubles pushed Egypt to seek a $3 billion, 46-month financial support package from the International Monetary Fund that was signed in December.<\/p>\n

“The Egyptian economy is currently in the midst of some turbulence, with a very uncertain outlook,” with inflationary pressure, a drop in household purchasing power and a slowdown in major infrastructure programmes dragging down growth, BNP Paribas said in a note.<\/p>\n

Median forecasts in the April 6-26 Reuters poll of 13 economists was for growth of 4.0% in the fiscal year ending on June 30, 4.5% in 2023\/24 and 5.0% in 2024\/25.<\/p>\n

That forecast matched the 4.0% government predictions in a Nov. 30 letter of intent to the IMF. The presidency said in March Egypt was targeting growth of 5% in its budget for 2023\/24. <\/p>\n

The poll forecast annual urban consumer price inflation averaging 24.0% in 2022\/23 and 20.9% the following year before sinking to 9.3% in 2024\/25. That would be above the central bank’s target range of 5%-9% by the fourth quarter of 2024 and 3%-7% by the fourth quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n

Egypt’s annual inflation soared to 32.7% in March, just short of its highest on record six years earlier, official data showed this month.<\/p>\n

A spike in inflation followed a prolonged shortage of foreign currency, a series of devaluations starting in March 2022 and continuing delays in getting imports into the country.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian pound would weaken to 34.00 per dollar by end-December 2023, to 35.00 by end-December 2024 and 35.07 a year later, economists forecast. <\/p>\n

Having left the currency unchanged since March 9 at about 30.90 to the dollar despite a promise to the IMF, the central bank said it would allow supply and demand determine its price. In the year before it had allowed the currency to fall by half.<\/p>\n

Currently at 19.25%, the overnight lending rate, was expected to rise to 19.75% by end-June before declining to 18.25% the following year and 13.75% the year after, the poll found.<\/p>\n

(For other stories from the Reuters global long-term economic outlook polls package:)<\/p>\n

\n

(Writing by Patrick Werr; Polling by Devayani Sathyan and Veronica Khongwir; Editing by Alex Richardson)<\/p>\n

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By Patrick Werr CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s economy will grow 4.0% this fiscal year and 4.5% next even as it endures a continuing depreciation in its currency, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday, in line with a government forecast for the current year. The country’s already vulnerable economy was shaken further by Russia’s invasion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-economy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEconomy\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3Q02L-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25499,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25497\/revisions\/25499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}