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A crisis is only an opportunity if you take it. By agreeing to a $3 billion loan for Egypt, the International Monetary Fund has again missed the chance to press the government of General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to free the economy from the grip of his military.
There is no gainsaying the importance of the concessions that the IMF apparently extracted from Cairo — a 200 basis-point hike in interest rates and a more flexible currency regime. The former will help slow inflation, which was 15% in September, the highest level in four years. The latter will allow market forces to determine the natural level of the Egyptian pound, an improvement on what analysts described as the government’s “drip, drip, drip” devaluation policy.
But these measures won’t address the main weakness of the Egyptian economy: The overweening presence of the country’s military in practically every important sector, from…
