CAIRO: A recent report published by the Central Bank of Egypt revealed that the volume of external debt has gone up by about $2.2 billion, reaching $33.7 billion through the end of June 2010. The country's total domestic debt reached 888.7 billion Egyptian pounds by the end of June 2010, where government debts represented 74.7 percent of that total. Public economic bodies represented 17.7 percent. The net international reserves of the Central Bank rose to $35.5 billion by the end of September, compared to $35.2 billion at the end of last June, an increase of $313 million, or 0.9 percent. The monthly report of the Central Bank noted that the volume of trade exchange between Egypt and the outside world during the past fiscal year 2009/2010 reached about $72.9 billion, down 3.5 percent compared to what had been achieved during the previous fiscal year. The report showed that the total volume of commodity exports amounted to about $23 billion, representing a decline of 5.1 percent due to lower income from oil exports by 6.8 percent, and non-oil exports fell by 3.9 percent. The Central Bank also noted a decline in net domestic assets by 5.1 billion pounds, a rate of 0.8 percent during the period from July to August of the current fiscal year, pointing out that this decline was due to the increase in domestic credit by 11.3 billion pounds at a rate of 1.5 percent. BM
