Egypt Reduces Dollar Sales to Stem Pound Decline Before IMF
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Egypt’s central bank will reduce the number of dollar auctions this week to three as it seeks to slow the pace of the pound’s depreciation before loan talks with the International Monetary Fund resume later this month.
The regulator sold $74.8 million of the U.S. currency at today’s sale at a cut-off price of 6.5299, according to an announcement on Bloomberg. Banks placing bids at that price received 20.2 percent of their demands, the data show. The pound weakened to 6.5626 a dollar as of 5:15 p.m. in Cairo, extending to 5.7 percent its slide since the central bank started the auctions Dec. 30, data compiled by Bloomberg show.