Egypt’s foreign reserves keep climbing, and the composition question stays unanswered

The Central Bank of Egypt put net international reserves at USD 56,293.9m at the end of July 2026, a monthly rise of roughly USD 1.22bn, or 2.22 per cent, according to the CBE release carried by Zawya. End-August was subsequently reported as a record USD 57.2bn, though that figure reached this desk only through the aggregator Rio Times and has not been matched to a CBE primary. A better stress gauge than headline reserves is the banking sector’s net foreign assets, which the CBE put at USD 28.418bn in July 2026, against USD 22.6bn in October 2025 — a swing of close to USD 6bn in nine months, and the clearest sign that foreign currency has stopped leaking out of the commercial banks. Egypt Independent published a story within the last 24 hours headlined on record hard-currency reserves and a spike in overseas transfers; this desk could not retrieve its contents and does not treat the September number as reported.

The reserve build sits alongside a Fund programme that has been repeatedly reshaped. The IMF’s Country Report No. 26/069 covers the fifth and sixth reviews under the Extended Fund Facility and the first under the Resilience and Sustainability Arrangement, with requests for rephasing of access, extension of the arrangements, a waiver of nonobservance of a performance criterion, and modification of performance criteria — four forms of relief in a single document title. Mada Masr reported in December 2025 that the Fund had eased the tone of its criticism of the government as those reviews passed. Ahram Online reported in July that the IMF had upgraded Egypt’s 2026 growth projection to 4.6 per cent while the wider MENA region was projected into contraction on the regional war. A further country report, No. 26/224, was published in late August and is likely the seventh review.

Julie Kozack, the Fund’s communications director, held a press briefing on 1 October, inside this window. Whether Egypt was raised, and whether a date was set for the next review, is not established here: the transcript was not read before the search budget ran out.

Assessment: Reserves are the number the government wants quoted and the one that tells you least. Accumulation can come from exports, remittances, tourism and canal dues, or it can come from Gulf deposits that must be rolled and carry money that can leave in a week. The CBE publishes the total, not the mix, and the distinction decides whether the last nine months are a recovery or a cushion. The banking-sector net foreign assets series is the more honest read, and it has moved in the right direction. Treat any “record” framing published this weekend as unverified until the CBE’s own end-September release is on the table — and note that the IMF has already granted a waiver, an extension and a rephasing on this programme.