CAIRO, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Egyptian authorities have reached a staff-level agreement on the fourth review of Egypt's economic reform program to grant Egypt with 2 billion U.S. dollars, the Egyptian Finance Ministry said on Thursday.
"The staff-level agreement will provide Egypt with the fifth tranche of 2 billion U.S. dollars of the three-year IMF loan, bringing the total disbursements under the program to about 10 billion U.S. dollars," according to Mohamed Mait, Egyptian finance minister.
He added that the success of the negotiations confirmed the strength of the Egyptian economy and the stable path of the Egyptian reforms against fluctuations of the world economy recently.
The IMF said in a statement that the agreement on the fourth review reaffirmed the authorities' commitment to their reform program.
The Egyptian economy has continued to perform well, despite less favorable global conditions, supported by the authorities' strong implementation of the reform program, the IMF added.
The IMF report highlighted that Egypt's GDP growth accelerated from 4.2 percent in 2016/2017 to 5.3 percent in 2017/2018, while the unemployment rate declined to below 10 percent.
Other factors that positively help reach the agreement, according to the report, included that the current deficit narrowed to 2.4 percent of GDP in 2017/2018 from 5.6 percent the year before.
"The Central Bank of Egypt's monetary policy helped bring down annual inflation from 33 percent in July 2017 to 11.4 percent in May 2018," it added.
The IMF forecasted Egypt's fiscal year in 2018/2019 will achieve a primary surplus of 2 percent of the GDP.
Egypt agreed a three-year IMF loan of 12 billion dollars in November 2016 that is tied to ambitious economic reforms such as subsidy cuts, tax hikes, enacting the value-added tax, as well as the devaluation of its local currency.
Egypt received so far 8 billion dollars of the total loan.
