02:11 PM
Tuesday 07 March 2023
I wrote – Manal Al-Masry:
3 officials of exchange companies, which have a wide geographical spread, said that the movement of buying and selling the dollar is very weak, and there is no demand from citizens to sell the currency, especially Arab currencies, due to expectations of a new decline in the price of the pound against the dollar soon.
The head of an exchange company, Lamasrawy, said that the rate of selling dollars from citizens is very weak at the level of all branches of the company, and that the movement of selling dollars to customers is not sufficient for requests due to limited supply.
He added that the rise in the price of the dollar in the black market, which deals in the exchange rate illegally, expanded during the current month due to speculation on gold and the large number of merchants to buy currency from the parallel market to import gold from abroad, and charge the currency price difference to the customer through Overpricing of gold.
The selling price of gold in Egypt is trading higher than international prices, which indicates that the price of the dollar, on the basis of which the local gold price is calculated, is higher than what is traded in banks, according to what an official of the exchange companies said.
He explained that the lack of currency supply caused an increase in the operating costs of the branches in terms of employees and the cost of the various services of the company due to the decline in its profitability.
The average selling price of the dollar rose by about 96% against the pound in bank transactions in about a year, jumping from 15.76 pounds on March 20, 2022 to 30.81 pounds at the end of today’s transactions, Tuesday, according to Central Bank of Egypt data.
The heads of two other exchange companies said that there is very little demand from customers to sell the dollar in exchanges because there are expectations of an increase in its prices during the coming period.
They explained that the margin of the selling price of the dollar between the official rate – banks and money changers – and the black market does not exceed 3 pounds, compared to previous times during which the margin reached 7 pounds, despite the movement of weak buying and selling between manipulators in the exchange rate.
International financial institutions – Societe Generale, Credit Suisse and HSBC – issued reports during the past January and February, in which they expected a rise in the price of the dollar to between 34 and 36 pounds in the short term (the coming days), due to currency pressure and the slow completion of Egypt’s sale of some of its assets to Gulf countries. Which increases currency pressures.