Egypt's Pound Hits Record Low of 56 to the Dollar Before Vote on Defensive Support for Saudi Arabia
CAIRO — The Egyptian pound hit a record low of 56 pounds per U.S. dollar on Monday, LSEG data showed, falling past the 55 mark it had crossed at major local banks on October 22. On the previous trading day, the Egyptian Exchange suspended Sunday's session — the first trading day of the Egyptian week — for half an hour after a 10% fall in its EGX 100 EWI index; on Monday the blue-chip EGX30 index was down 2% in early trade before inching up slightly.
The currency's slide came before a parliamentary vote expected to authorise the armed forces to provide defensive support to Saudi Arabia against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis if requested. Central bank Governor Hassan Abdalla said at a Cairo forum last week that a flexible exchange rate can serve as the "first line of defense" against external shocks, contrasting that with the previous crisis, when Egypt held on to a fixed rate after the shock from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a black market emerged. "The most important thing for us is unifying the exchange rate, not the exchange rate itself," Abdalla said.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：开罗尼罗河畔（资料图）。照片：Vyacheslav Argenberg，CC BY 4.0，经维基共享资源。 / The Nile in Cairo (file photo). Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
