CAIRO — The governor of Egypt’s central
bank, Tareq Amer, resigned on Wednesday, state media reported, with the Arab
world’s most populous country in the grip of a deepening economic crisis.
اضافة اعلان
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi accepted the
resignation of Amer, who took up his post in 2015 and had been due to stay on
until next year, the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram reported.
Sisi named Amer a presidential adviser but there was
no immediate word on who would replace him at the central bank.
He leaves with the Egyptian pound changing hands at
19.1 to the US dollar, its second lowest exchange rate on record, exceeded only
during the currency’s brutal devaluation in winter 2016.
Egypt devalued its currency again in March in the
face of soaring inflation.
The world’s largest importer of wheat, Egypt has
been badly hit by the war between its two main suppliers — Russia and Ukraine —
which has sent world prices soaring.
The cost of some foodstuffs has risen by as much as
66 percent, helping push inflation to a headline rate of 15 percent.
Thirty million of Egypt’s 103 million people now
live below the poverty line, with as many more living precariously, according
to World Bank figures.
Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Egypt’s outlook
from stable to negative, citing a growing risk of social unrest triggered by
plummeting living standards.
Egypt’s hard currency reserves have fallen from $41
billion in February to $33.1 billion now, despite support from close ally Saudi
Arabia which deposited five billion dollars in the central bank in late March.
Egyptian authorities are in talks with the
International Monetary Fund on a new bailout as the public debt has hit 90
percent of GDP.
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