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World Bank agrees on $3bn loan to Egypt

October 17, 2018 at 1:07 am

Egypt has reached an agreement on a new $3 billion financing deal with the World Bank, the country’s investment and international cooperation announced yesterday.

Sahar Nasr said that she had agreed with the World Bank officials on the final arrangements for a new loan for Egypt.

Nasr’s statement neither provided details on whether the loan will be offered on one tranche nor its interest rate. However, she stressed that the funding would be secured in “the next few months.”

The Egyptian minister noted that the new funding “comes within the framework of the World Bank’s confidence in Egypt’s economic reform measures and its keenness to continue to support the implementation of the nation-wide economic and social reform programme.”

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The new loan, Nasr pointed out, is expected to raise the country’s total external debt, which was reported to have registered $92.64 billion at the end of last June.

In March, Egypt announced that it had received the third and final $1 billion tranche of a World Bank $3 billion loans, which was aiming to support the government budget and the country’s economic reform programme.

Egypt has been negotiating billions of dollars in aid from various lenders to help revive an economy battered by political upheaval since the 2011 revolution and to ease a dollar shortage that has crippled import activity and hampered recovery.

In November 2015, Egypt won a three-year $12 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, which aimed at reviving the country’s struggling economy, bringing down public debt and controlling inflation while seeking to protect the poor.