Egypt foreign reserves drop most since 2013 on debt payment

North Africa’s biggest economy saw its net international reserves drop 7.7 percent last month, the most since January 2013, to $18.5 billion, the central bank reported on its website. Egypt repaid $667 million to so-called Paris Club creditors and lost $155 million in a revaluation of its gold assets, the data shows. Central bank officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Egypt’s reserves have struggled to recover to pre-Arab Spring levels. While infrastructure spending has helped economic growth rebound, tourism and foreign investments remain below the levels seen before the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The pace of the drop “is not reassuring,” Hany Farahat, senior economist at Cairo-based CI Capital, a unit of the country’s biggest listed lender, said by phone. “I would not be surprised if it’s attributed to the deterioration in the trade balance, which in our view is becoming a concern to growth.”