The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) stated that the banks operating in the country issued letters of credit worth $6.34b for oil and gas imports during the period from January 2016 to December 2016, reported Daily News Egypt.

In related news, an official with the petroleum sector had stated to Egypt Oil&Gas that Egypt imports bill for petroleum derivatives, including benzene, diesel, mazut, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) reached EGP 13b a month. He added that government’s petroleum unpaid crisis will decrease from EGP 6b per month to EGP 3.5b per month after the current increase in pump prices.

In addition, a recent report issued noted that the total collected US dollars by the banking system since the flotation on November 3 2016 reached $19.2b.

CBE pointed out that it has achieved and exceeded the requirements of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, which were agreed upon as part of the economic reform program to obtain a $12b loan facility, in terms of foreign exchange reserves and monetary indicators. This comes as the foreign exchange reserves at the CBE registered $28.526b at the end of March 2017.