Egyptian stock indexes saw a collective rise by the end of Monday trading, with stocks hitting their highest level in two months.

 

The main stock index rose by 0.6 percent to reach 5,451.7 points, a two-month high on the markets.

 

The EGX70, which measures the shares of small and medium-sized enterprises, rose by 0.61 percent to hit 436.1 points, while the broader EGX100 index, which includes large, small and medium-sized stocks, went up by 0.48 percent to reach 747.19 points.

 

The stocks gained around LE 2.1 billion.

 

The value of trading on stocks rose to reach LE 517.8 million, as Egyptians and Arabs bought, while foreign investors tended to sell.

 

Mohamed Taha, vice president of Banque Du Caire, said that financial assistance from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are helping reduce the gap between the price of the dollar against the pound on both the official and black markets.

 

Taha predicted the dollar black market to disappear within a month with the help of Arab aid packages which increased foreign reserves at the Central Bank to about $20 billion as an initial estimate, after having slumped to about $15 billion by the end of June.

 

He also predicted that the CBE would continue to conduct dollar tenders to regulate the exchange market and finance the import of certain priority goods.

 

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm