Egypt maintains rates, to issue statement later

    Egypt's central bank maintained its key policy rates, including the benchmark overnight deposit rate, and will issue a statement by its Monetary Policy Committee later today.
    The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) held its overnight deposit rate steady at 8.75 percent, the overnight lending rate at 9.75 percent, the rate on its main operation at 9.25 percent and the discount rate at 9.25 percent.
    The CBE surprised most economists last month by cutting its rates by 50 basis points as it considered the upside risks to inflation to be contained by lower oil and food prices while there were risks to the country's economic growth from the challenges facing the euro area and softer growth in emerging market economies.
    The CBE raised its rate by 100 basis points in July 2014 following a government cut in fuel subsidies that pushed up fuel prices sharply and thus inflation.
    Egypt's consumer price inflation rate jumped to 11.04 percent in July 2014 but has slowly declined since then, reaching 9.7 percent in January. Core inflation also fell to 7.06 percent in January from 7.69 percent in December.
    The CBE currently aims at "low rates of inflation" but has said it intends to adopt an inflation-targeting policy framework.

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