Egypt

Global trade faces protectionist headwinds that are dampening the outlook for growth in the coming years. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), trade volume grew by 4.7% in 2017 and is expected to have moderated slightly to 4.4% in 2018 and dip to 4% in 2019. Although this means growth will fall below the 4.8% average seen since...

The period of easily raising funds from abroad seems to be coming to an end for emerging markets around the world. In the new environment of higher interest rates in the US and increased competition for capital flows, portfolio managers are becoming more selective with where they place their money.

Egypt has been a regional banking powerhouse for more than a century and is home to the biggest banking sector in North Africa, according to the Union of Arab Banks. The industry is also one of the region’s most stable, surviving both the economic turbulence that followed the Arab Spring and a more recent foreign currency crisis that saw...

With the largest population in the Middle East and a relatively established insurance sector, Egypt has long been a promising market for insurers. Domestically licensed companies have shown strong growth in recent years, driven by public expenditure on capital projects and increasing private sector activity. However, the sector’s impact on the...

As the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has attempted to stabilise the country’s currency in recent years, the banking sector has been placed in a challenging position. At the macro level, an overvalued Egyptian pound following the 2011 revolution acted as a brake on investment and undercut economic growth, with the consequence being a reduced...

The IMF, in a report issued in November 2018, forecast GDP would expand by approximately 5.3% in FY 2018/19, increasing over the 4.2% expansion seen a year earlier and marking the highest rate of annual growth since 2008. This was supported by figures released by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), which put year-on-year GDP growth at around 5.3...