The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) said the government repaid $6.442bn in external debt service, covering both interest and principal, during the first quarter (Q1) of the 2025/2026 fiscal year, compared with $7.952bn in the same period of 2024/2025.

In a recent report, the bank said the total includes $2.078bn in interest payments and $4.363bn in principal repayments.

Egypt’s external debt stood at $163.7bn in September 2025, compared with $161.23bn in June of the same year.

The CBE noted that the external debt-to-GDP ratio declined to around 42.4% at the end of September, compared with 44.2% at the end of June.

In a separate development, the central bank reported that net foreign assets (NFA) of the banking sector increased by EGP 474.4bn during the first half of the 2025/2026 fiscal year, equivalent to a 64% growth rate. It attributed the rise to an increase of EGP 339.2bn in banks’ net foreign assets and EGP 135.2bn at the central bank.

In a related context, foreign investors’ holdings of local treasury bills rose to the equivalent of EGP 2.525trn in January 2026, up from EGP 2.449trn in December 2025.

The bank also said remittances from Egyptians working abroad increased by 28% to around $29.4bn during the first eight months of the 2025/2026 fiscal year, compared with about $23bn in the same period of the previous year.

On a monthly basis, remittances rose by 25.7% in February 2026 to around $3.8bn, compared with about $3bn in February 2025.

The post Egypt repays $6.4bn in external debt service in Q1 2025/26: CBE first appeared on Dailynewsegypt.