The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) decided to extend the exclusion period for rice, lentils, and beans from their 100% cash cover for another year, ending 15 March 2023.
The CBE has extended the exclusion period twice in the past two years since it first introduced the exemptions in 2019.
The CBE confirmed in a letter to banks that this decision applies to the import operations of all companies, taking into account the credit study conducted by each bank.
It indicated that this comes in light of following-up with the needs of the Egyptian market and its keenness to facilitate import procedures to meet the needs of citizens.
The CBE recently decided to stop dealing with collection documents in the implementation of all import operations and to work with documentary credits only while allowing the acceptance of collection documents received from goods that were already shipped before the issuance of this decision.
It confirmed that this comes within the framework of the Cabinet’s directives regarding the governance of the import process and the activation of the system of pre-registration for shipments, which will be applied compulsorily as of the beginning of March 2022.
The decision excluded shipments received by express mail and up to $5,000, or its equivalent in foreign currencies, from the application of this decision.
The CBE also decided to exclude drugs, serums, and their chemicals, tea, meat, poultry, fish, wheat, oil, powdered milk, infant formula, lentils, butter, and corn from the application of the decision.
Subsidiaries of foreign companies may also be exempted from this decision within the scope of import operations from the parent company and its groups only.
The CBE also instructed banks to reduce all commissions for documentary credits to be like commissions for collection documents and also directed them to increase the existing credit limits for customers and open new limits for new customers in proportion to their import volume and open all documentary credits required of all customers upon their request.
