The Egyptian dance with the IMF continues in Washington

Experts from the International Monetary Fund recently left Cairo without an agreement on a multi-billion dollar loan package. Via the Associated Press: A team from the International Monetary Fund left Egypt without getting broad backing from the opposition for a government economic plan aimed at getting a key $4.8 billion loan, political blocs said Tuesday. ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Experts from the International Monetary Fund recently left Cairo without an agreement on a multi-billion dollar loan package. Via the Associated Press:

Experts from the International Monetary Fund recently left Cairo without an agreement on a multi-billion dollar loan package. Via the Associated Press:

A team from the International Monetary Fund left Egypt without getting broad backing from the opposition for a government economic plan aimed at getting a key $4.8 billion loan, political blocs said Tuesday.

Egypt’s main factions say they agree in principle on the need for the loan, seen as a lifeline for the country’s battered economy, but there are concerns over unrest if painful austerity measures linked to it are not backed by political consensus.

The IMF said in a statement that its delegation met with a range of political figures and Cabinet officials during the nearly two week-long visit that ended late Monday. In previous, shorter trips, the IMF has only focused on meeting with government officials.

But it appears possible that negotiations will continue this week in Washington, where the spring meetings for the IMF and World Bank are underway. Ahram Online reports:

A high-level delegation of Egyptian officials left Cairo on Wednesday, bound for Washington DC to take part in the semi-annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank later this week.

Central bank governor Hisham Ramez, Finance Minister El-Morsi El-Sayed Hegazy and Planning Minister Ashraf El-Arabi will join finance ministers and central bankers from around the world gathering at the event.

Hegazy, who is scheduled to take part in an IMF-sponsored discussion on ‘The Political Economy of Transition in the Middle East’, said before his departure that the Egyptian delegation would take advantage of the global meeting to resume talks with the IMF over a pending $4.8 billion loan to the struggling country.

With suspicious political and civil society actors still in Egypt, Washington may be a more conducive atmosphere for progress on the deal. 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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