Egypt's current account deficit for the financial year ending in June 2020 increased to $11.2 billion from $10.9 billion in the previous year, the central bank said on Monday. Net foreign direct investment inflows stood at $7.5 billion for the full year, down from $8.2 billion the previous year, in large part due to a 68.2% decline in net investments in the country's oil sector the central bank said. “The current account deficit remained broadly stable throughout FY 2019/2020, with the first half of the fiscal year posting an improvement and the second half bearing the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the bank said. The country's economy had been boosted in the last three years by an upswing in tourism, strong remittances from Egyptian workers abroad and recently discovered natural gas fields coming onstream. But since the coronavirus outbreak, tourism has collapsed and worker remittances have come under threat with the decline of oil revenues in Gulf Arab states, where many Egyptians are employed. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said earlier in November that Egypt's economy had performed better than expected despite the pandemic.