Egypt’s NBE, Banque Misr Cancel 18% Certificate of Deposit

On Monday, Egypt’s two major government banks, the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and Banque Misr announced that they had cancelled the one-year certificate of deposit, introduced on March 21, that bore an exceptionally high yield of 18%.

This certificate was launched shortly after the Central Bank of Egypt hiked benchmark interest rates by 1 percent and depreciated the pound against the U.S. dollar by 14 percent. It was part of state efforts to stabilise the Egyptian pound after the currency depreciation move to try to unlock inflows.

The two banks collected around 755 billion Egyptian pounds ($40.6 billion). The NBE had raised 515 billion pounds, while Banque Misr collected 240 billion pounds from the certificates since March.