In the past few days, Egypt has settled $1.28bn of its international debt. Assistant deputy governor of the Markets Sector at the Central Bank of Egypt, Rami Aboul Naga, said that Egypt paid $750m to foreign oil companies. He added in his statement to the Middle East News Agency (MENA), that this payment is the second installment that Egypt has settled with oil companies in the past two months. This installment comes after it settled $750m from the foreign petrol companies' debts. The total settlement made by Egypt during May and June reached $1.5bn. The total debts owed by Egypt to foreign oil companies had reached $3.5bn before it settled the recent $1.5bn. The Egyptian government did not announce the amount of the debts after these payments. Aboul Naga added that Egypt is committed to settling all of its international dues. He also said that by the beginning of July, Egypt would be ready to settle around $700m as an installment to the Paris Club. Egypt has also paid $513m to Saudi Arabia in the past two days, Aboul Naga added. This amount "represents bonds that the Egyptian Ministry of Finance had offered in June 2012 that are due over five years," Aboul Naga said in a statement to MENA. The Central Bank of Egypt announced earlier this week that foreign reserves increased about $2.5bn and exceeded $31.1bn at the end of May, its highest since February 2011. Egypt suffers from an inflation in its external debt, which jumped to $67bn at the end of December. The country recently depended on meeting its financial needs through foreign loans, whether through offering bonds in international markets or borrowing from international institutions due to the low cost loans from other countries as opposed to loans from the local market.
