Egypt Moves Closer to IMF Loan

Egypt has reached a $2.7 billion currency swap agreement with China, moving closer to mustering the outside financing needed to win final approval of a $12 billion International Monetary Fund loan, Bloomberg reported. The agreement is being processed by the Chinese authorities, an Egyptian central bank official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There’s a chance the funding will be expensive, but regardless of the agreement’s structure, we need every penny we can get,” said Hany Farahat, the Cairo-based senior economist at CI Capital, a subsidiary of Commercial International Bank, the nation’s biggest publicly traded lender.