New Report Shows 2022/2023 Foreign Currency Inflow & Outflow

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) issued its annual report on foreign exchange receipts and payments for 2022/2023, revealing a drop in both the amount of foreign currency that entered Egypt and the amount of foreign currency that left Egypt in this period.

Foreign exchange receipts, or the inflow of foreign currency into a country through processes like trade, foreign investment, foreign currency borrowing, tourism and more, dropped between the 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 periods. Foreign exchange receipts encompass both physical currency and other forms of foreign exchange, such as deposits in bank accounts, foreign securities, and more.

While in 2021/2022 Egypt reported USD 160.5 billion in foreign receipts, the 2022/2023 period only saw USD 121.9 billion of foreign currency inflow, a 24% decrease. The report detailed that this drop in foreign exchange receipts was largely linked to a reduction in government receipts, which totaled USD 2.4 billion in 2022/2023.

In addition to shedding light on the amount of foreign currency that came into Egypt in 2022/2023, this report revealed how much foreign currency left the country during this time. A country’s foreign exchange payments are the outflows of foreign currency made to entities beyond the country’s borders through transactions such as imports, debt servicing, and dividend payments to foreign investors. It also includes transactions such as the money foreign-owned businesses take back to their own countries and the money nationals spend while abroad.

The report’s data on foreign exchange payments revealed a decrease in these transactions as well, with Egypt spending USD 135 billion in 2022/2023 as opposed to USD 185.3 billion in 2021/2022. This represents a 27.1% drop in foreign exchange payments, largely driven by a reduction in portfolio investments, which fell from USD 32.2 billion in 2021/2022 to USD 7.6 billion in 2022/2023.