The Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to keep its interest rates at 10.75% for deposits, 11.75% for lending, and 11.25% for credit and debit.

The CBE interest rates are the main index for interest rates on the Egyptian pound in the local market.

On 17 March, MPC decided to raise the interest rate to 1.5% to contain inflation caused by the rising price of the US dollar against the Egyptian pound and to maintain stability of commodity prices.

On 10 April, the CBE announced that the low annual public inflation rate at the end of March stood at 9.02% compared to 9.13% in February 2016.

In addition, the annual core inflation rate increased to 8.41% in March compared to 7.5% in February.