The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved the payment of $500m to Egypt as part of the second of three tranches of a $1.5bn loan agreed earlier this year.

In November the bank’s board approved the first instalment, which Cairo is understood to have received already.

The second tranche, which is still subject to parliamentary approval, is expected to be deposited to the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) in January 2017.

Egypt received the first instalment of the agreement earlier this year.

Egypt’s foreign reserves are set to sit at $25bn following deposits from the Washington-based IMF, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and China in recent months.

On 11 November, Cairo received the first instalment of a $12bn loan from the IMF. Before that, deposits from China, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were also made part of the $6bn-worth of bilateral financing that the IMF required Egypt to raise in order to qualify for the three-year $12bn programme.

The government also recently announced it has entered negotiations with European countries for about $800m-worth of loans and grants from European countries aimed at boosting economic growth and supporting the country’s projects market.