CBE: Balance of Payments achieves a surplus of $599.1 mn during the first half of 2022/2023

The Central Bank of Egypt revealed in a statement issued today, regarding performance of the balance of payments during the first half of the fiscal year 2022/2023 that the Egyptian balance of payments achieved a surplus of $599.1 mn, compared to a deficit of $14.1 mn during the same period of the previous fiscal year.

The Egyptian economy's transactions with the outside world during the first half (July/December) of the current fiscal year resulted in an improvement in current account deficit at a rate of 77.2%, to record about $1.8 bn, compared to $7.8 bn during the same period of the previous fiscal year.

This came as a main result of the decline in trade deficit by 28.4%, at a value of $6.2 bn, to be limited to about $15.5 bn during the first 6 months of the current fiscal year, compared to $21.7 bn during the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Also, due to the doubling of service balance surplus, as it jumped by 92.62%, to record $10.868 bn during the first half of the fiscal year 2022/23, compared to $5.642 bn during the same period of the fiscal year 2021/2022, an increase of $5.226 bn.

Due to the increase in Tourism revenues by 25.7%, to record about $7.3 bn during the first half of the fiscal year 2022/23, compared to about $5.8 bn during the same period of the previous fiscal year.

This comes as a result of the increase in the number of night spent at a rate of 27.2%, to record about 78.4 million nights, and the number of tourists coming to Egypt at a rate of 27.5%, to record about 6.8% of one million tourists.

The rise in Canal transit fees also played a major role in achieving a total surplus in the balance of payments, as it increased by  17.8% to record about $4 bn during the first half of the current fiscal year, compared to about $3.4 bn during the same period of the previous fiscal year; net tonnage increasing by 13.3% to reach 753.3 million tons.

Capital and financial transactions account also achieved a net inflow of about $2.8 bn during the July/December 2022 period, compared to about $11.4 bn during the same period of the previous fiscal year, and this coincided with deflationary monetary policies followed by US Federal Reserve, which leads to the exodus of hot money from emerging markets.

In addition to the increase in the bank's foreign assets by $1.8 bn during the first half of the fiscal year 2022/2023 (representing an outflow), compared to a decline of $8.3 bn (representing an inflow) during the corresponding period of the fiscal year 2021/2022.

The increase in the net inflow of foreign direct investment into Egypt, recording about $5.7 bn during the period from July to December 2022, compared to about $3.3 bn during the same period of the previous year.