Seven Thousand Years of Civilization, Now Queueing at the IMF
We built the pyramids without a single IMF mission. This is worth remembering on the mornings when Cairo's economists queue — politely, in suits — for the next tranche of somebody else's money.
The gallows humor writes itself, so allow me. Egypt's economy runs on four rivers: the Nile, the Suez Canal, tourism, and remittances from Egyptians working in the Gulf. Three of the four are at the mercy of other people's decisions. The Nile's flow is now negotiated with an upstream neighbor building a very large dam — a decade of talks, many communiqués, and a river that keeps flowing downhill regardless of the communiqués. The Canal's revenues rise and fall with wars and shipping crises in seas we do not control. Tourism depends on Europeans feeling safe. Only the remittances are truly ours — the wages of our own people, sent home with love and converted at whatever rate the central bank announces that week.
And so we borrow. The debt piles up in dollars; the revenues arrive in pounds; the arithmetic is left as an exercise for the next government. The IMF arrives with its familiar medicine — float the currency, cut the subsidies, privatize the assets — and Cairo nods, signs, and implements it at the speed of a felucca going upstream. The Gulf writes checks with fewer conditions and longer memories. Both want something. The Fund wants reform; the Gulf wants loyalty; the bond market wants yield. Egypt, meanwhile, wants dinner.
Here is the thing the creditors miss, in their spreadsheets: this country has survived the Hyksos, the Romans, the Ottomans, the British, and Nasser's nationalizations. It will survive the bond market. The Suez remains the world's shortcut, and shortcuts collect rent — that is the one structural advantage no IMF program can negotiate away. The question is not whether Egypt endures. It always does. The question is whether, this time, the tolls get invested before they get spent — or whether seven thousand years of civilization will once again be asked to wait for the next tranche.