CAIRO: The monthly statistical bulletin issued by the Central Bank for the month of May 2010 reported a rise in foreign debt by $1.8 billion, reaching $3.33 billion through the end of December 2009, compared to June 2009. The bank attributed this rise to the exchange rates of most currencies in which loans were made before the U.S. dollar equivalent of $410.4 million, while debt service burdens decreased to reach $1.3 billion compared to the same period of previous fiscal year. The bulletin pointed out that the total domestic public debt amounted to 863.3 billion Egyptian pounds, an increase of 104.9 billion pounds. The indebtedness of public and economic bodies amounted to 53.5 billion pounds, an increase of 1.2 billion pounds, the Central Bank reported. At the same time, net indebtedness of the National Investment Bank amounted to 142.6 billion pounds, equal to a 16.5 percent increase of 1.9 billion pounds. In a related context, the financial sector, of the government's Budget Sector and NIB and social insurance funds, during the period from July-March for the financial year 2009/2010, saw the deficit reached 92.4 billion pounds; the deficit of the state budget contributed some 87 billion pounds of the total amount of the total deficit for this sector. At the same time, the bulletin monitored a rise in net international reserves by 10.7 percent to reach $34.7 billion dollars through the end of April 2010, compared with $31.3 billion dollars at the end of June 2009. The bank attributed the high foreign exchange reserve to the increase of the foreign currency equivalent “in addition to increasing the allocation of Egypt and the SDR equivalent of $1.1 billion.” The bulletin pointed to higher balances of credit facilities granted by banks by 4.11 billion pounds during the period July/March of the fiscal year 2009/2010, “where the private business sector accounted for 9.64 percent of the total assets of credit facilities to non-government.” The relative distribution of assets of credit facilities to the non-government sector “indicates that the sector received 4.33 percent of such stocks at the end of March 2010 followed by the services sector, which obtained 6.24 percent of the total facilities and the trade sector's share was 4.14 percent.” The bulletin said that the volume of trade exchange, “total exports and imports of goods,” between Egypt and the outside world during the period July/December 2009/2010 reached $9.34 billion at a 4.16 percent decline from the same period the previous fiscal year and the “first partner of Egypt was the European Union in the volume of trade exchange with Egypt, including rate of 8.36 percent of the total, followed by Asian countries at 2.18 percent and then the United States at 5.15 percent.” BM
