Egypt’s Final IMF Review Expected in November as Drawings Reach 7.3 Billion
The eighth and final review of Egypt’s programme with the International Monetary Fund is expected to be completed in November, Mohamed Maait, an Executive Director at the Fund representing a constituency that includes Egypt, said in an interview with Asharq Bloomberg. The Fund’s own schedule sets the review as completable on or after 15 September, so November would place it about two months into that window.
Maait, a former Egyptian finance minister, said Egypt received about one point eight billion dollars last week, covering the seventh review under the Extended Fund Facility and the second under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility. The Executive Board completed both on 30 July, after staff and the Egyptian authorities reached a staff level agreement at the end of June.
Recent history suggests his estimate is reasonable. The same schedule set the seventh review as completable on or after 15 June; it was completed on 30 July, roughly six weeks later. Applied to a 15 September availability date, a comparable interval would fall in late October or November.
The Fund’s own account puts the latest amounts precisely. Completion allowed Egypt to draw one point one one billion special drawing rights, about one and a half billion dollars, under the Extended Fund Facility, and two hundred million special drawing rights, about two hundred and seventy two million dollars, under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility. That brings total purchases and disbursements under the two arrangements to about five point four billion special drawing rights, or roughly seven point three billion dollars.
| The programme | Detail |
| Extended Fund Facility | Eight billion dollars, raised from three billion in March 2024 |
| Resilience and Sustainability Facility | One point three billion dollars |
| Approved | 16 December 2022, for 46 months |
| Extended through | 15 December 2026 |
| Reviews completed | Seven under the Extended Fund Facility, two under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility |
| Drawn to date, both arrangements | About 5.4 billion special drawing rights, roughly 7.3 billion dollars |
| Final tranche, eighth review | 1,113.02 million special drawing rights under the rephasing |
The size of the last tranche is already set. A rephasing agreed at the fifth and sixth reviews divided the remaining Extended Fund Facility purchases, then totalling three thousand six hundred and ninety one point four seven million special drawing rights, into three: one thousand four hundred and sixty five point four four million at those reviews, one thousand one hundred and thirteen point zero one million at the seventh, and one thousand one hundred and thirteen point zero two million at the eighth. The eighth review will assess performance against end June performance criteria and end September indicative targets.
The Fund’s assessment of the economy behind those numbers is mixed. Real gross domestic product grew five percent in the third quarter of the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, taking growth across the first nine months to five point two percent, and the Fund expects about four point six percent for the full fiscal year, one tenth of a percentage point below its estimate at the previous review. Growth is projected to moderate to four point four percent in the following year on the lagged effects of the regional conflict, weaker investment and higher input costs.
Inflation has been the harder part. Headline inflation fell steadily until March, when it rose to fifteen point two percent, about one point four percentage points above what Fund staff had expected, on currency depreciation and higher energy prices. It eased to fourteen point three percent in June, though core inflation rose to the same level, and the Fund’s estimates put seasonally adjusted month on month core inflation at an elevated one point five percent. The Fund now projects headline inflation rising to sixteen point seven percent in the second half of 2026, delaying convergence to the central bank’s target range by about a year.
Fiscal performance was stronger. Both the primary balance and tax revenue targets had been exceeded by the end of March, gross financing needs fell by five percent of gross domestic product over the fiscal year, and the primary surplus is projected to rise from four point eight percent of output to five percent. The current account deficit is estimated at four point five percent of output for the fiscal year, with record remittances, tourism receipts and a gradual recovery in Suez Canal revenues offsetting higher energy import costs. Gross international reserves reached one hundred and nineteen percent of the Fund’s adequacy metric by the end of June.
Structural reform is where the Fund is least satisfied. It describes progress as uneven and says efforts to reduce the state’s role in the economy, including the divestment programme, have moved more slowly than anticipated and need to be accelerated. Divestment proceeds stand at around five hundred and twenty million dollars following the recently finalised Gabal El Zeit deal and Ministry of Finance sales of shares in selected listed companies.
Nigel Clarke, Deputy Managing Director and Acting Chair, said Egypt entered the period of regional conflict from a solid macroeconomic position, but that important vulnerabilities remain in elevated public debt, large gross financing needs and a sizable state footprint, and that decisive implementation of the state ownership policy and the divestment agenda will be essential.
Why it matters: The fiscal side of this programme has delivered where it was measured. The primary balance and tax revenue targets were exceeded, and the Fund says so without qualification. The structural side has not, and the divestment figure is the evidence: around five hundred and twenty million dollars of proceeds is a modest sum against the state footprint the programme was designed to shrink, and the Fund has now called that progress slower than anticipated across three consecutive reviews. That gap is what makes the final review consequential rather than procedural. A programme that closes with the arithmetic delivered and the ownership reforms unfinished leaves the harder half of the agenda without an external timetable attached to it.
Looking ahead: The arrangement runs to 15 December, and the eighth review becomes available on or after 15 September, so the calendar leaves limited room if it slips as far as the seventh did. The immediate data point is the July inflation reading from the statistics agency, against the Fund’s projection of a rise toward sixteen point seven percent in the second half of the year.
Sources: International Monetary Fund; Asharq Bloomberg.
