The Information and Decision Support Center of the Egyptian Council of Ministers prepared a research project, “The Document on the Most Important Strategic Directions of the Egyptian Economy for the New Presidential Period (2024-2030),” which determines the policies for the Egyptian economy until 2030 regarding economic and social trends.
According to the study, Egypt aims to launch a digital currency issued by the Central Bank of Egypt, represented by the digital pound (E-Pound) by 2030.
This comes to enhance the competitiveness of the national currency and increase the efficiency of monetary policy, alongside exploiting opportunities provided by digital transformation to further develop the Egyptian financial sector and increase levels of monetary policy efficiency.
The document indicated that Egypt aims to continue developing the Egyptian financial sector and utilize digital transformation to raise the rate of financial inclusion to 100 percent by 2030, represented by financial services and digital payment systems.
It seeks to raise the number of digital financial wallets to about 80 million by 2030.
Egypt also aims to implement budget unity and comprehensiveness, balancing digital transformation towards adopting programs and performance budgeting in an effort to boost the effectiveness of government spending, and reform economic bodies to ensure their governance.
What is a Digital pound?
The Director of the Cairo Center for Economic and Strategic Studies Abdel Moneim al-Sayed, reviewed the importance of the digital pound which the Central Bank of Egypt recently announced that it is about to issue.
Sayed said during the “Sabah al-Balad” program back in December that like its name implies, the digital pound will be the electronic equivalent of the paper pound.
It is set to be dealt with on the electronic payment system, he explained, and is one of the state’s goals towards digital transformation and reducing use of paper cash transactions.
Benefits
Digital currencies have spread in use around the world, attracting many investors due to their high value and price.
Economic expert Sayed Khedr said there has been a recent spread of virtual currencies, with China having implemented its own digital currency system.
There is more security when digital currencies are used officially by countries, he noted, as digital currencies are considered anonymous.
“We do not know who invented Bitcoin, so the safety rate is low. On the contrary, if digital currencies are officially implemented by the central bank, the security rate will be higher,” Khedr said.
The idea behind the digital pound is to issue an application or website through the banks, with the digital pound is purchased through it. If the price of the digital pound rises, there will be a profit, and this currency or pound can be converted into a pound that can be traded and used.
Khedr assured that that the issuance of banknote pounds would not be reduced if the digital pound was launched, as virtual currencies are completely different from banknote currencies, but still contribute to supporting the economy indirectly if they are widely marketed.
