The US dollar has strengthened against the Egyptian pound for first time in almost a month to register an average of EGP 18 on Tuesday, according to central bank data.
In early February, the official exchange rate of the pound against the greenback strengthened from EGP 18.5 to EGP 15.7 in the middle of last month.
Accordingly, Egypt's finance ministry lowered the customs dollar twice last month to reach an exchange rate of EGP 16 and then down to EGP 15.75 to reflect the leap in the Egyptian pound's value against the greenback.
The ministry has stated that it would revise the exchange rate of the customs dollar again in the coming days.
In January, the customs dollar registered EGP 18.5 after the pound's value weakened significantly, reaching EGP 19 against the dollar only one month after the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) decided to float the pound.
The CBE freely floated the pound from its fixed EGP 8.88 rate against the dollar in early November as part of a set of economic reforms to alleviate Egypt’s flagging economy.
Egypt’s foreign reserves reached $26.54 billion by the end of February 2017, up from around $26.36 billion in January 2017, the central bank said.
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