After raising its value, what is the customs dollar?

Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy announced on “Wednesday, March 15, 2017,” raising the value of the customs dollar to 17 Egyptian pounds, which is the fourth change in the price of the customs dollar since the decision to float the pound on the third of last November, but what is meant by the customs dollar?


1- The customs dollar is what the importer pays in local currency equivalent to the dollar fees imposed on him in return for releasing the imported goods and held in customs. Example: If a car importer has to pay 2000 US dollars in customs duties, and the customs dollar price is 100 pounds, the car importer will pay 20 thousand Egyptian pounds to the customs authority, and if the customs dollar price is changed to 20 pounds, the importer will pay for the same car 40 thousand pounds.


2- The customs dollar price was fixed when the currency exchange rate was officially set by the Central Bank, that is, before the pound float, and the prices of all imported goods, or the manufacture of which imported materials are used, are affected by the price of the customs dollar paid in them.


3- On the 9th of last November, a week after the flotation, the Customs Authority issued instructions to its employees to link the customs dollar exchange rate to the prices that appear in the Central Bank’s daily bulletin, meaning that the value of the customs dollar was changing daily with the rise and fall of the currency.


4- But last January 16, the Ministry of Finance responded to the requests of importers and “fixed” the customs dollar exchange rate at the level of EGP 18.55.


5- In February 2017, the Ministry of Finance reduced the customs dollar price to 16 pounds, compared to 18.5 previously.


6- At the end of February, Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy said that the price of the customs dollar had fallen to 15.75 as a result of the dollar ’s ​​depreciation


7- Finally, on the morning of Wednesday, March 15, 2017, Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy said that the price of the US dollar would rise from Thursday to the end of March to be worth 177 Egyptian Pound.