Source:aljazeera
As Egypt's economy continues to nosedive, the country has been gripped by a chronic dollar crisis in recent months, exacerbated by falling revenues from tourismand the Suez Canal.
The dollar shortage has fuelled inflation and severely hurt importers and domestic manufacturers who depend on imported raw materials or components. For instance, many imported medicines have become totally unaffordable and there is a shortage in locally produced generic alternatives due to the inability to import active ingredients.
The hard currency shortage has even affected the black market, with a number of reports in the Arabic media over hours-long searches for dollars at inflated prices.
To tackle the situation and to cool the overheated black market, the Egyptian Central Bank decided, last week, todevalue the Egyptian pound by 13 percent and to sell $198 million to commercial lenders at 8.85 Egyptian pounds to the dollar, from its previous level of 7.73LE.
Egypt's long-suffering poor
The Cairo stock exchange, along with financial analysts, was jubilant at the news, recording its largest single-day rise, of 7 percent, since July 2013, and ending the week 14 percent up.
However, the effect on Egypt's long-suffering poor and vulnerable will be far less benign - their underpaid labour has also been devalued.
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