Crowds before a Bank of Egypt branch, Mansoura, Daqahliya, 6 January, 2011." title="Crowds before Bank of Egypt" class="imagecache imagecache-highslide_zoom" width="536" height="402">Banks will open as usual on Thursday from 8:30 AM until 2:00 PM, with some branches remaining open until 5:00 PM.
Banks
on Sunday opened 327 branches from 10:00 AM until 1:30 PM in Cairo,
Alexandria and provincial capitals. On Wednesday, the total number of
open bank branches countrywide rose to 732.
Hisham
Ezz al-Arab, managing director of the Commercial International Bank,
said the bank would on Thursday reopen 40 branches, to be increased by
Monday to 90 branches, from a total of 155 branches that would be fully
operational by next week.
The
National Bank is currently operating 110 branches out of its total of
254 branches. This number will be increased as of Thursday so as to
cover the provinces.
This comes as the Egyptian pound fell slightly in
early trading on Wednesday, after the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)
intervened to upgrade local currency by more than 1 percent after it hit
its lowest level in six years.
The
Egyptian pound has fallen since the outbreak of the wave of political
protests that began on 25 January, with traders and analysts expecting
further declines. CBE Deputy Governor Hisham Ramez has said the bank was not ruling out further intervention "if necessary."
Youssef
Farouk, manager of a local bureau de change, said the exchange market
had been stable since banks announced their readiness to convert
local-currency accounts into US dollar accounts for those clients
wishing to do so.
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