Egypt’s central bank keeps main interest rates steady

Egypt’s central bank kept its main interest rates unchanged on Thursday at a meeting of its monetary policy committee, it said in a statement.

The central bank decided to keep overnight deposit rate at 16.75 percent and the overnight lending rate at 17.75 percent.

The central bank said in a statement that annual headline inflation had increased to 14.2 percent in August from 11.4 percent in May, but core annual inflation had fallen to 8.5 percent in July before rising back to 8.8 percent in August.

“The pass-through to domestic inflation from developments in emerging market economies remained contained due to stabilization and structural policies that support improving macroeconomic fundamentals,” the central bank said.

“Keeping key policy rates unchanged remains consistent with achieving the target path for headline inflation that was announced in May 2017, namely 13 percent (±3 percent) in 2018 Q4, and single digits after the temporary effect of fiscal supply shocks dissipates,”