Egypt Central Bank Bails Out Tourism.

[Hafiz]

Central Bank Bails Out Tourism.

The occasional stats on tourist arrivals or anecdotes from members of this forum just obscure the full story. The tourism industry is very sick and the Central Bank has allocated $US5 billion to bail it out/keep it on life support.

Such are the successes of Sisi’s policies and his law and order that the industry is in worse situation than ever under the worst of Mubarak. https://www.reuters.com/article/egypt-t ... SL8N28P0AP

With pathetic exports other than oil and gas at a low and imports bloated this failure to earn the tourist shekel will create serious problems for the balance of trade, the currency and the bloated sovereign debt.

It would be interesting to know which families or murderers are being helped by the corrupt Central Bank and whether assistance is being 'paid for' in return for government equity in the firms helped. We will never know but I suspect that the beneficiaries are the connected families, that the debt is not secured, that any loans to non-connected families are secured and ruthlessly foreclosed on etc etc. Small and medium touristic firms are just told to kill themselves. Some old Egypt..

Whether the immense hotel and related assets owned by the armed forces are eligible for assistance isn't clear but I'd hazard a guess.

Why a central bank (a regulator not a market participant except to protect the currency, the banking system, the debt or manage inflation) is behaving like a commercial bank is another question to which there is only a mysterious answer. Why this is not being handled y commercial banks suggests that raw political power and favoritism are being used to hand out the taxpayers loans.