The Egyptian pound reaches its highest level in more than two years

The Egyptian pound hit Sunday its highest level in two years, fueled by soaring foreign funds.

The currency was trading at 17.34 pounds per dollar today, up more than 3 percent from the 17.86 level recorded on Jan. 22 when the last rally began.

"You see that most indicators improve," said Hani Farahat, an economist at the Egyptian investment bank CI Capital, "Tourism and Exports, Local Natural Gas Production Replaces Imports and Shipments". funds, and foreign direct investment improved slightly. "

He added that the increase in capital inflows was largely due to Egypt's abandonment of the foreign investors' money-transfer mechanism, which was guaranteed to investors wishing to sell their assets in the first place. government securities to transfer their money abroad in dollars.

"Immediately after the cancellation of the transfer mechanism, all capital inflows in the country directly affect the liquidity between banks … This is also reflected in the volatility of the pound sterling against the dollar."

"I think it's a bit late – if the conversion mechanism had been canceled a year ago, it would have happened a year ago."

Since the central bank published the pound in 2016 at about half of its value, economists say it has tightened its grip on the value of the local currency, which has no longer been in effect since March 2017.