The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) announced that the Net Foreign Assets (NFA) increased to EGP 95.2bn at the end of July 2017, up from EGP 3.85bn at the end of June, marking an increase of 2,482%. In July, the CBE had received the second tranche of the loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) worth $1.25bn. According to the CBE, this increase contributed to a surplus in NFA at the Egyptian banking system to record EGP 139.11bn at the end of July compared to EGP 65.11bn at the end of June, up by EGP 74bn. In a recent report, the CBE has reported that NFA at banks in Egypt declined by EGP 17bn, registering EGP 43.9bn at the end of July, compared to EGP 61.432bn at the end of June. Foreign agreements and loans contributed to overcoming the deficit of foreign assets in the banking sector, as well as inflows of foreign investment in treasury bills and customers exchanging dollars at banks. The CBE also said earlier that the state received some $80bn since the flotation of the pound. In another context, the CBE revealed the rise in Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in the fiscal year (FY) 2015/2016 to $7.9bn, compared to $6.43bn in FY 2015/2016, up by $1.47bn. The CBE explained that FDI increased in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2016/2017 to $1.35bn, up from $1.04bn in Q4 FY 2015/2016. European Union countries ranked first in terms of countries investing in Egypt with a total of $1.45bn, according to the CBE, noting that the UK investments alone reached $693.1m, followed by Belgian investments ($621m), then Dutch investments at $30.1m. German investments came in fourth place with a value of $26.4m, Luxembourg with investments of $20.8m, then Italian investments at $20m. Meanwhile, American investments reached $352.7m. The volume of investments of Arab countries during the fourth quarter of FY 2016/2017 reached $416.4m, including Saudi investments of $167.5m, UAE investments of $147.2m, Kuwaiti investments of $35.3m, Bahrain investments of $10.3m, Jordanian investments of $7m, and Lebanese investments of $6.8m. The rest of the world's investments have gone up $359.4m, including investments from China amounting to $55.3m and from Japan worth $35.8m, while Swiss investments recorded $33.1m, and Turkish investments of $13.6m.
