The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has unveiled that the country’s foreign currency reserves dropped last December for the first time since the EGP flotation, standing at USD 42.551 bn compared to USD 44.513 bn at the end of November, Invest-Gate reports.

“The recent drop in the foreign currency reserves to the government’s payment of loan interest and treasury bills ‎to foreign investors,” an official source at the CBE told state-run MENA news agency on January 7.

The last time Egypt’s foreign currency reserves fell was in October 2016 – a month before it clinched a USD 12 bn loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the same year to ease an acute shortage of foreign currency, which involved a currency float.

In June 2017, Egypt’s foreign debt stood at USD 79 bn while the burden of foreign debt service reached USD 13.2 bn during the FY 2017/18 versus USD 7.32 bn in the prior fiscal year, according to CBE’s figures.

The central bank had attributed this hike to higher loans as well as a jump in the exchange rate of foreign currencies against the USD, which accounted for a USD 0.4 bn increase.