Egypt
How much can you save travelling now to
Hotel
January 2024
Room in 5-star hotel costs from €228, which in Nov 2021 was €50.
You can't save on your hotel costs:
+456%
Food
January 2024
2 dinners, 2 beer, 2-litres Coca Cola costs €11, which in Nov 2021 was €10. You can't save on food costs
+10%
Shopping
January 2024
Cinema ticket, Zara dress, Levi's jeans, Nike sneakers and iPhone 12 costs €1838, which in Nov 2021 was €1604. You can save on shopping:
+14,6%
Why Egypt is cheaper now?
Capital is leaving developing countries - the dollar is strengthening against all currencies (including the Egyptian pound). Egypt buys wheat and a huge amount of other food items from abroad. Also oil and oil products, and this is now very expensive. Buys in dollars. Egypt is also in a permanent debt crisis - constant budget deficits only exacerbate the outflow of money from the Egyptian pound.
Moreover, the Central Bank of Egypt said that it is slowly moving away from the fixed rate. The transition to a floating rate was one of the terms of the deal with the IMF, which provides financial assistance to Egypt.
High debt in foreign currency (which you can't print), expensive debt servicing, pressure on the domestic currency, and failure to raise revenues will combine to lead to debt, currency, and economic crises in the country. All of these factors explain why the Egyptian economy has and will continue to have a very difficult time.
Pound has lost more than 35,8% in comparison with Euro and has lost more than 63,8% with USD.
Inflation rate is 18,7% and EU inflation is 10.1%.
Tickets
There are plenty of cheap tickets to Egypt from other European countries. The cheapest tickets in January are:
76€ from Rome
80€ from Istanbul
84€ from Abu Dhabi
87€ from Debrecen
The BigMac Index by The Economist suggests that Egyptian Pound is 52,9% undervalued if we look at the Raw Index. And is 38,1% undervalued using GDP-adjusted methodology.