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Egypt's foreign reserves will fall by over $5 billion to $10.4 billion by the end of June, a senior army financial official told reporters. Major General Mahmoud Nasr, assistant for financial and accounting affairs at the Ministry of Defence, made the prediction during a briefing for local media.
Egypt's reserves stand at $15.72 billion, according to central bank data in early March, a sum equivalent to about three months worth of imports. It includes $4 billion in gold bullion the government would likely be reluctant to draw upon. Just before the January 2011 popular uprising that unseated president Hosni Mubarak, the country's foreign reserves sat at around $36 billion. Egypt has spent more than $20 billion in foreign reserves to support the pound, which has weakened by only 3.65 percent against the dollar since last year's popular uprising, despite losses to tourism and investment, main sources of foreign exchange.
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