The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) is moving to convert debts owed by importers in dollars to debts to be repaid in local currency, according to a senior banking source.

The source told Daily News Egypt that those debts are worth almost $4bn.

He added that those debts have been accumulating over the past period, as they were not repaid due to the dollar crisis.”The CBE is working to ease the burden on importers and to help them pay-off their debts and avoid the exchange rate risks, as well as to ease the demand on the dollar, both in the official and parallel market,” he added.

Tarek Amer, the new governor of the CBE, has been holding meetings over the past days with a number of representatives of various economic sectors to discuss the problems they are facing and to work on resolving them.

Daily News Egypt learned that Amer is holding almost daily meetings with the heads of major public banks, in order to stand on the developments in the foreign exchange market, and to overcome any problems they may have with respect to private importers to meet the demand on the dollar.

Public banks have recently completed covering all pending requests for the dollar.

According to a relevant source, banks have pumped about EGP 1.8bn to release the shipments of imported raw materials to factories.