Egypt devalues - now the hard work starts

After struggling with a lack of dollars in its economy for over a year, the Egyptian central bank finally threw in the towel, moving to a liberalisation of the pound against the dollar to allow the market to set the rate and the economy to start moving again.

The initial range of devaluation is from 8.9/$ to 13/$, meaning the pound has more than halved from the level it was at during the Arab Spring. This is in line with where the black market rate has been in recent days as the economy ground to a halt, having appreciated from a rate of 18/$ over the weekend and from 15/$ last week. The uncertainty in the value of the pound over the last few weeks has caused an economy under pressure, with GDP missing its 5 per cent growth target at 3.8 per cent, to slow further, even as a seri...