CDB provides $1 billion loan to strengthen the country’s foreign reserves and preserve macroeconomic stability (Linked to Project ID#52882 and ID#89462)

On January 23, 2016, the President of China, Xi Jinping, and the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, signed a liquidity support facility (LSF) agreement wherein China Development Bank agreed to provide a $1 billion loan to the Central Bank of Egypt. The loan, captured via Project ID#52881, was reportedly provided on the following terms: an 11-year maturity, a 3-year grace period, and an interest rate of 4.7352%. The purpose of the loan was to help the Central Bank of Egypt shore up the country’s foreign exchange reserves in the face of pressure on the Egyptian pound. According to CDB, its Qingdao Branch and the CDB Cairo Representative Office organized a $900 million disbursement shortly after the LSF agreement was signed. Reporting from the Central Bank of Egypt suggests that CDB subsequently ‘upsized’ the face value of the liquidity support facility agreement from $1 billion to $2 billion. However, the precise timing of this increase in the face value of the loan is unknown. The Central Bank of Egypt reports that the amount outstanding under the LSF was $1.8 billion in September 2019, $1.5 billion in September 2020, $1.6 billion in December 2020, $1.3 billion in March 2021, $1.3 billion in June 2021, $1.1 billion in September 2021, $1.1 billion in December 2021, $842.9 million in March 2022, $817.8 million in June 2022, $560.5 million as of September 2022, and $567.2 million in December 2022.

Additional details

1. According to the Chinese Government, the Qingdao Branch of CDB provided an RMB 7 billion (approximately $1 billion) loan to the Central Bank of Egypt in 2018. For the time being, AidData has coded the commitment year for the $1 billion LSF upsizing as 2018. 2. The Chinese project title is 央行10亿美元授信项目. 3. The loan's interest rate (4.7352%) is drawn from the World Bank's Debtor Reporting System (see https://www.dropbox.com/s/ab8qt4n6jijcbhd/IDS_Average%20interest%20on%20new%20external%20debt%20commitments.xlsx?dl=0). 4. In the database of Chinese loan commitments that SAIS-CARI published in July 2020 and the Overseas Development Finance Dataset that Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center published in December 2020, the face value of this CDB loan is identified as $1 billion. AidData relies on the $2 billion face value that is reported by the Central Bank of Egypt for the time being. However, it is possible that the $2 billion face value of the liquidity support facility agreement that is reported by the Central Bank of Egypt reflects the receipt of an additional RMB 8 billion CDB loan (埃及央行70亿人民币授信项目) in 2018 (which is reported by multiple sources, including China’s Ministry of Commerce). This issue merits further investigation.

Number of official sources

27

Number of total sources

47