The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its expectations of Egypt’s real GDP growth for FY2022/2023, upping it to 6.6% from its previous forecast in July (5.9%), but lowered its FY2023/2024 prediction to 4.4% from 4.8%, revealed the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report.

The announcement comes at the heels of the World Bank’s own forecast for Egypt, which was lowered to 4.8% for FY2022/2023.

The IMF revealed its forecast for growth in 2027 to 5.9%.

Egypt’s inflation is expected to hit 13.2% in 2022, up from the previously forecasted 8.7% in April, while its prediction for 2023 was lowered to 9.2% from 14%.

Egypt’s urban consumer inflation rate hit its highest recording since November 2018 at 15%, revealed the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) on Monday.

The IMF expects global growth to retreat to 3.2% in 2022 and 2.6% in 2023.

“This is the weakest growth profile since 2001 except for the global financial crisis and the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflects significant slowdowns for the largest economies: a US GDP contraction in the first half of 2022, a Euro area contraction in the second half of 2022, and prolonged COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns in China with a growing property sector crisis,” the report explained.

Egypt is currently in talks with the IMF for a fresh loan in the face of repercussions from the Russia/Ukraine conflict. On the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings yesterday, Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait stated that IMF negotiations were in its “final confirmation” stage.