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Egypt’s External Debt Crisis: The Role of Debt Management and Maturity Structure

Mahmoud Magdy Barbary,Rania Osama Mohamed

Published 2025 in Economies

ABSTRACT

Egypt has experienced a sharp rise in external debt over the past decade, increasing from USD 55.8 billion in 2015 to over USD 165.3 billion by 2023. Despite maintaining a debt-to-GDP ratio within internationally accepted thresholds (approximately 45% in 2023), the country faces mounting economic distress, including foreign exchange shortages, currency depreciation, and rising debt-servicing burdens. This study argues that Egypt’s crisis stems not from excessive borrowing but from ineffective debt management, particularly the misalignment between debt maturities and the economic returns of financed projects. Using annual data from 2010 to 2023—a period deliberately selected to capture Egypt’s post-2011 political and economic transition—the analysis applies a Vector Autoregression (VAR) model and Granger causality test to explore short-term interactions between short-term and long-term external debt, the exchange rate, and foreign reserves. While the small sample size limits long-term econometric inference, it provides meaningful insights into short-term debt dynamics and liquidity pressures characteristic of Egypt’s current economic phase. The results show that short-term debt exerts significant depreciative pressure on the currency, while long-term debt weakly undermines reserves when tied to non-revenue-generating projects. Policy recommendations emphasize improving debt maturity alignment, enhancing transparency, and linking debt servicing to productive investments.

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