The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has seemingly eased the stringent guidelines it had imposed on allocations of USD through its weekly FX auctions. The weight of allocations dropped in Tuesday’s auction to 21.98%, the lowest in nearly two months and compared to 38.1% in Sunday’s auction, indicating more banks have been allocated USD. In addition to showing flexibility of the measures, the move may also indicate more banks have complied with the more stringent rules, which primarily favoured banks serving a wider client base – in order to cover the largest number of orders – and those who manage to boost their own source of foreign currency. (CBE, Mohamed Abu Basha)