CAIRO, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said on Wednesday that Egypt's external debt declined by more than 15 billion U.S. dollars in six months to go below 153 billion dollars, the Egyptian cabinet said in a statement.
"The external debt recorded 168 billion dollars last December and 152.8 billion in June," the cabinet quoted Madbouly as saying in a meeting with Egyptian intellectuals in Cairo.
He attributed the decline to the recent measures taken by the government to reform the country's monetary policy.
Over the past few years, Egypt has been suffering from a shortage of foreign currency needed for imports which led to the devaluation of the local currency and high inflation.
Egypt's inflation rate reached a record high of 38 percent last September. It has been gradually declining this year and was recorded at 25.1 percent in August.
With the government's efforts to rationalize spending and increase investments in the new fiscal year, "we are working on reducing the inflation rates to reach less than 10 percent by the end of 2025," Madbouly pointed out.
Egypt's foreign currency reserves increased to 46.6 billion dollars by the end of August, compared to 34.9 billion dollars by the end of August last year, according to the Central Bank of Egypt.
The financial push came after Egypt signed in February a 35-billion-dollar investment deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop Ras Al-Hekma, a new resort town on Egypt's northern coast.
Madbouly stressed that Egypt's recent economic, monetary, and banking reform measures, along with the Ras Al-Hekma deal, improved the country's economic indicators.
