The Central Bank of Egypt declared, on Monday, the sale of $622 million worth of treasury bills, with an average interest rate of 1.396 per cent.

The sale came in line with the increase of financial needs of the governmental budget, which witnessed a 7.1 per cent increase of governmental spending from EGP 997.7 billion in 2020/2021 to EGP 1.068 trillion in 2021/2022.

Although the government said that it is targeting an increase of local funds to EGP 990.133 billion from EGP 832.293 billion in 2020/2021, and a decrease of foreign funding from EGP 165.44 billion to EGP 78.375 billion, Egypt is still depending on debt instruments.

In December 2020, the Finance Minister Mohamed Mait, said that foreign investments in debt instruments exceeded $23 billion. This was not the first time for Egypt to roll out treasury bills this year as the CBE sold bills worth $540.6 million with an average interest rate of 3.088 per cent, last June.

In April, the CBE sold $988.5 million worth of bills, with an average interest rate of 3.095 per cent. In February, the CBE sold $1.088 billion, with average interest rate of 3.39 per cent. In January, $861.1 million worth of bills were sold with average interest rate of 3.41 per cent.

According to today’s statement, CBE expects Egypt to gather $3 billion from the sale of the bills in three categories, adding that it received over $9 billion worth of demands.