The foreign currency deposit cap for industries is expected to be raised soon, and to be completely removed by the end of this year, Chairman of the Federation of Egyptian industries (FEI) Mohamed El- Sewedy told Daily News Egypt Thursday.
The Federation of Egptian industries (FEI) are in talks with the Central Bank of Egypt to remove the foreign currently deposit limit, El-Sewedy added.
The CBE, under former governor Hisham Ramer, set a $10,000 daily cap for deposits and withdrawals of foreign currency. The bank also stipulates that monthly deposits must not exceed $50,000.
The move to introduce the caps was heavily criticised by exporters and importers, who stated that such step are “strangling the market”.
El-Sewedy also discussed the recent steps taken by the Ministry of Industry and Foreign Trade, which he believed to be “revolutionary steps” that would regulate random importation.
The ministry recently announced a plan to limit the importation of luxury goods through applying some restrictions. The list of goods comprised 23 different commodities. In a media interview with Bloomberg, CBE Governor Tarek Amer said this step can decrease the budget for imports by $20bn.
“The consumer should know where the product is coming from and its quality,” El- Sewedy said, adding that “several workshops were shutdown as a result of this random importation”.
When asked to quantify the value of losses that could be attributed to the “unnecessary importation”, the chairman of the FEI said that at least 2,000 leather facilities were shut down nationwide.
In the ready-made garments sector, the number of facilities that were shut down was more or less the same, El-Sewedy noted.
