10th July, 2018
Egypt’s annual urban consumer inflation surged to 14.4 per cent in June from 11.4 per cent in May, the official statistics agency CAPMAS said in Cairo on Tuesday.
CAPMAS said the surge came after 10 months of steady decline.
Prices soared in particular after the import-dependent country floated its currency, the pound, in November 2016, reaching a record high of 33 per cent in July 2017.
The increase, which took economists by surprise, came after Egypt raised fuel, electricity and taxi fares last month.
The increases were part of efforts to meet the terms of a 12 billion dollars International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan programme from late 2016 that included cuts in energy subsidies and tax increases.
The government in May raised metro fares in a move that had increased public discontent, sparking a brief bout of protests.
“It’s certainly higher than what we estimated. It is of course for the most part taking into account the fuel subsidy cut,” Allen Sandeep, head of research at Naeem Brokerage, said in a statement.