Egypt’s BOP deficit widens 61.4% to $1.6 bln in Q1 FY25/26

According to data from the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) BOP report released on Wednesday, the current account deficit narrowed by 45.2 percent year on year during the first quarter of FY 2025/2026—covering July to September 2025—to around $3.2 billion, compared with $5.9 billion in the same period of FY 2024/2025.

This improvement was driven by a 28.4 percent increase in net current transfers, which reached around $10.7 billion, as well as a 23.4 percent rise in the services surplus to $5 billion.

Remittances, tourism, and Suez Canal revenues remain among Egypt’s largest and most stable sources of foreign currency, supporting foreign reserves and easing pressure on the BOP.

Remittances from Egyptians working abroad continued their upward trajectory, rising by 29.8 percent to around $10.8 billion, compared with $8.3 billion during the same period a year earlier.

Consequently, Remittance inflows increased by 42.8 percent year-on-year in the first ten months of 2025, reaching $33.9 billion. This followed a series of corrective measures introduced by the CBE in March 2024, including a sharp devaluation of the local currency and a six-percentage-point interest rate hike, which narrowed gaps in the domestic hard-currency market and improved formal remittance inflows.