External debt of Egypt goes up

October 10, 2023

(3 minutes read)

According to the CBE, by original maturity, the external debt consists mainly of long-term debt, which accounted for US$136.4bn or 82.5% of the total debt in March 2023, while short-term debt accounted for US$28.9bn. By residual maturity, short-term debt amounted to about $47.5bn in March 2023. Meanwhile, long-term debt reached about $117.9bn. Long-term external debt registered $136.4bn (82.5% of total external debt) in March 2023, up by about $7.3bn compared to June 2022. This is illustrated in the following:

Buyers’ and suppliers’ credit reached about US$19.1bn, up by US$2.7bn in March 2023, compared with the end of June 2022. Multilateral institutions’ debt reached about US$52.7bn, up by US$1.4bn as compared to June 2022. Repurchase Agreements (Repo) registered about $5.5bn.

Non-guaranteed private sector debt reached US$1.6bn, up by US$769.6m. This rise, which was realized mainly during the period January/March 2023, resulted from a loan of about $750.0m granted to a private bank by its headquarters and another one of US$10.0m from a multilateral institution. It is worth noting that this outstanding stock includes the Green bonds, issued by the Commercial International Bank in July 2021, with a nominal value of US$100m.Other bilateral debt 1 amounted to some $11.8bn, up by $689.0m.

Bonds issued abroad (non-resident holdings) reached $29.6bn, up by $593.9m. This increase came as a dual effect of the new issuance of SUKUK at a value of $1.5bn, and the redemption of Eurobonds issued in US dollars (a trench at a value of) $0.9bn during Jan/March 2023.

The outstanding stock of bonds as of March 2023 includes the following: Roughly US$22.5bn of Eurobonds issued in US dollars, the equivalent of about $4.1bn of Eurobonds denominated in euro, about US$1.5bn of SUKUK issued in US dollars in February 2023.