The Commercial International Bank (CIB) introduced a new one-year USD-denominated certificate of deposit (CD) with a monthly yield of 6 percent. The minimum investment for the new CDs is $10,000, and clients can redeem them at any time, as per the bank’s statement.
Meanwhile, on July 26, the state-owned National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and Banque Misr released four USD-denominated annual-yield CDs with a maturity of three years.
These financial initiatives come amid Egypt’s current challenge in addressing a shortage of US dollar liquidity in the local market and a financing gap estimated to reach $17 billion by 2026. To address this, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced in July the government’s plan to increase the country’s US dollar liquidity to $191 billion by 2026 through revenues from tourism, the Suez Canal, remittances, and commodity exports.
Over the past 18 months, Egyptian state-owned and private-sector banks have issued several high-yield CDs to absorb liquidity in the local market amidst rising inflation and interest rate hikes. In January, NBE and Banque Misr introduced one-year maturity CDs with a 25 percent yield after one year, the highest yield on record.
CIB, established in 1975, is Egypt’s top private sector bank offering a wide range of financial products and services to businesses of all sizes, institutions, households, and high-net-worth individuals. The bank’s total assets rose to EGP 635.83 billion (or about $20.6 billion) in 2022 from EGP 498.23 billion in 2021.
The Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Egypt is scheduled to meet on August 3 to review the key interest rates in light of the latest economic developments on the local and global levels.