Banking-sector foreign assets rose 1.6% in dollars while the pound lost about 4% against them

The CBE’s July statistical bulletin, reported by Daily News Egypt on 5 September, put the banking sector’s net foreign assets at $28.418bn, equivalent to EGP 1.454trn, against $27.965bn, or EGP 1.378trn, in June. The dollar figure rose 1.6%; the pound figure rose 5.5%. The gap is the exchange rate: the CBE recorded the dollar at EGP 51.1934 in July against about EGP 49.2763 in June, a depreciation of roughly 3.9% in a month. Any account leading on the pound number is reporting a currency move as a capital inflow. Total foreign assets across the CBE and the banks reached EGP 5.146trn from EGP 4.939trn, with foreign liabilities at EGP 3.691trn from EGP 3.591trn. Domestic liquidity rose to EGP 15.499trn from EGP 15.261trn, and foreign-currency deposits held by non-government customers rose to the equivalent of EGP 3.425trn from EGP 3.264trn.

The programme these numbers are scored against is running down. The IMF Executive Board completed the seventh EFF review and second RSF review on 30 July. Its release records that both the primary balance and tax revenue targets were exceeded by end-March 2026, that gross financing needs fell by 5% of GDP in FY2025/26, and that the primary surplus is projected to rise from 4.8% of GDP to 5% in FY2026/27. The same release delivers a four-word verdict on the rest: “Progress on structural reforms has been uneven.” The Fund expects inflation to rise to 16.7% in the second half of 2026 on higher energy prices, exchange-rate depreciation and base effects, delaying convergence to the CBE’s target range by about a year. Urban inflation had already accelerated to 14.9% in July from 14.3% in June, its first monthly rise since March, and the CBE has held its deposit rate at 19% for four consecutive meetings.

Two figures circulating on the programme need flagging. The aggregator Rio Times reports that the IMF fixed a programme exchange rate of EGP 47.8077 per dollar — the CBE’s official buy rate on 30 September 2025 — as a technical assumption for calculating 2026 quantitative targets, and that the pound traded near 50.95 in the market on 4 September. The Files could not corroborate the programme rate against a primary source before publication; if accurate, it means the accounting benchmark and the market price have diverged by more than three pounds. Separately, the size of the July disbursement is reported two ways: the IMF’s June staff-level release cites SDR 100m (about $136m) under the RSF, while Business Today Egypt and Daily News Egypt report the Board approving SDR 200m (about $272m), for a total of about $1.77bn. The likeliest explanation is that RSF access was raised between the staff agreement and the Board.

Assessment: Both stories on this desk today are the same story told in different units. A reserve record built on bullion and a foreign-asset gain built on a weaker pound are improvements in the presentation layer, not in Egypt’s dollar position. What holds the current account together, on the Fund’s own accounting, is remittances, tourism, hedging contracts and a partial Suez recovery — none of which Cairo controls, and one of which, canal traffic, remains at roughly half pre-crisis volumes. The next unmanaged number is CAPMAS’s August urban inflation print, normally published around the 10th. With the facility expiring in December, there is little room left for the Fund to absorb another slippage quietly.