Egypt’s president Mohamed Mursi added fellow Islamists to a reshuffled government yesterday and the new finance minister pledged to finish talks on an IMF loan to stave off a currency crisis that risks provoking further unrest.
A senior IMF official is due in Cairo on Monday to meet leaders over the $4.8 billion loan deal.
Finance minister Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy is an expert on Islamic finance and is seen as sympathetic to the aims of the president and to the Muslim Brotherhood. A brotherhood spokesman denied Mr Hegazy was a member, but said three other new ministers were.
The new ministers in what is still largely a government of non-partisan technocrats take office in an economic crisis in which the currency has lost more than a tenth of its value since the uprising two years ago. – (Reuters)