Egypt will implement an automatic price indexation mechanism on 95 octane gasoline starting April, the petroleum minister said on Monday.

The price of 95 octane gasoline may stay at the current rate or it could increase or decrease by no more than 10 per cent, Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla told Reuters.

However, Egypt had raised gasoline prices by up to 50 per cent in June 2018, under an IMF reform plan calling for austerity measures.

El Molla also announced in June 2018 that the price rises would help Egypt save up to 50 billion Egyptian pounds (2.8 billion dollars) in allocations for state subsidies in the 2018-19 state budgets.

The price hike, the third since Egypt floated the pound currency in November 2016, was expected to pile more pressure on Egyptian consumers struggling to make ends meet amid high unemployment and rising prices.

The three-year 12 billion dollar IMF loan programme signed in 2016 was tied to the austerity measures.

Egypt hopes the reforms will lure back investors and kick-start an economy that crashed after its 2011 Arab Spring uprising.

IMF First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton had told government officials in May 2018 that Egypt would have to deepen reforms and better encourage private sector growth if it wants to cash in on a wave of global expansion. (Reuters/NAN)