Central Bank of Egypt holds rates for a fourth consecutive meeting

At its meeting on 20 August 2026 the Monetary Policy Committee left the overnight deposit rate at 19%, the overnight lending rate at 20% and the main operation rate at 19.5%.

It is the fourth consecutive hold, and matched the expectations of every analyst in a Bloomberg survey. The committee is weighing faster annual inflation against signs that monthly price pressure is easing.

For a company planning working-capital or expansion finance, the practical effect is that the cost of borrowing in Egyptian pounds has not moved across four meetings.