CAIRO: Egypt's foreign reserves haven risen to $15.5 billion after Qatar made a deposit to support the Egyptian economy, the finance minister said on Saturday.
 
The central bank put reserves at $15.015 billion at the end of December. It has implemented a new regime for buying and selling foreign currency and currency controls to try to stem a fall in reserves which have tumbled from $36 billion before the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
 
Finance Minister Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy told reporters about the new reserve figure without giving the value for the latest deposit by Qatar, a generous donor to Egypt.  (Reuters)