Egypt seeks $465 million loan from Arab Monetary Fund

Egypt is negotiating a loan worth $465 million from the Arab Monetary Fund, the country’s finance minister Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy told Al Arabiya.

The proposed package comes on top of the $4.8 billion in aid the country seeks from the International Monetary Fund.

Masood Ahmed, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia department, told Al Arabiya the fund is willing to grant a bigger loan to Egypt.

Egypt is also launching new measures to reduce pressure on the pound, the central bank governor Hisham Ramez told Al Arabiya.

Ramez also said on Tuesday that foreign exchange reserves had fallen slightly in March from February's level of $13.5 billion, Reuters reported. He told reporters in Dubai that the reserves were "down a little bit" from February.