CAIRO - Egypt's biggest bank, state-owned National Bank of Egypt (NBE), said on Tuesday it has seen little flight of funds abroad or conversions into US dollars, despite the political unrest in Egypt. Economists have warned the Egyptian pound may drop sharply over coming weeks as foreign investors frightened by Egypt's political impasse pull out. UBS analysts put the potential decline at as much as 25 per cent within a month. "In terms of currency, I don't see any issues of major concern," NBE Chairman Tarek Amer told Reuters in an interview. "We had almost negligible outgoing transfers - only a few for paying commercial bills on imported commodities or whatever. And on personal transfers, almost zero," he said. Egypt's central bank said on Tuesday it had intervened in the market to prop up the Egyptian pound, helping the local currency to rise against the dollar for the first time since political unrest gripped the country. Amer said he had prepared for a swift outflow of hard currency, but it did not materialise. "I imported $300 million a few days back in anticipation of dollar cash withdrawals, and we had made sure that our liquidity in foreign currency was available with the international banks so that we can meet any payments for outgoing transfers." "Even the demands for foreign exchange withdrawal or transformation, across the bank we had demand for foreign exchange of I think of almost $10 million as of today. Mostly it was for corporates to buy for meeting their payment needs." Amer said the planned reopening of the stock exchange on Sunday after a two-week shut-down caused by the unrest would be a test, but one the country's banking system would withstand. The stock market's benchmark index lost 16 percent of its value in the two days it was open after political protests erupted on Jan. 25, and other bankers have said they are bracing for a sell-off shares on Sunday. "It will be a test, because the stock exchange had suffered before the closure. It will be a test, and we're waiting to see how it will perform," Amer said. "But this will be something just responding to the events," he said. "The top companies on the stock exchange, their fundamentals are very good. So for a long-term investor, it should not be a big problem. But for speculators, people who are leveraged, then it's a problem."
