The Egyptian government does not believe that the country’s national currency - the Egyptian pound - should be pegged to the US dollar. Hassan Abdalla, the governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), said that the regulator was developing a new indicator for the Egyptian pound. According to the CBE governor, the currency should lose its peg to USD. At the same time, the Egyptian pound is not closely tied to the US currency. Notably, some countries use this peg to export energy and commodities whose prices are denominated in USD. Egypt is not one of those countries and the US is not its key trading partner. Abdalla stressed that the Egyptian pound should be linked to a basket of gold and other currencies besides the US dollar. Most likely, this decision will hardly affect the US currency but Egypt will probably see its national currency plummeting. The governor pinpoints that the Egyptian pound has strengthened against the Turkish lira, the euro, and the British pound, weakening against the US dollar. However, Egyptians tend to disregard this. According to Abdalla, it is necessary "to change the culture that we are linked to the dollar.” Last month, there was a rumor that Egypt would begin accepting bank cards from Russia's Mir payment system. Local travel agencies and hotel owners insisted on it. However, this news remained a rumor as Egyptian banks were afraid of Western sanctions.
