CAIRO: The Monetary Policy Committee of Egypt’s Central Bank (CBE) kept its deposit rate at 8.25 percent on Thursday and its lending rate at 9.25 percent, the fifth consecutive month it left them unchanged.
Global economic activity is recovering, albeit unevenly across sectors and countries, and supportive financial conditions are likely to continue globally in the medium term, the central bank said in a statement.
Policy makers noted the rise in global prices of oil, food and other primary commodities as supply struggled to keep up with surging demand.
Egypt’s annual general urban inflation rate rose to 4.8 percent in May 2021 from 4.1 percent in April.
The central bank, which has a target inflation rate of 7 percent, plus or minus 2 percent, through the fourth quarter of 2022, expects inflation to continue to reflect base effects from last year when the pandemic suppressed prices.
Preliminary data indicate annual real GDP growth of 2.9 percent during the first quarter of 2021, up from 2 percent in the prior quarter.
