The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has announced Cairo will pay approximately $720m to the Paris Club of creditor countries by the first week of July.

The payment is part of an agreement with the Paris Club that that involves Egypt paying approximately $700m twice a year to cover its foreign debt.

Egypt’s external debt reached $67.3bn at the end of the second quarter of financial year 2016/2017, compared to $60.1bn at the end of first quarter.

The improvement of Egypt’s foreign reserves over the last year has allowed the North African country to pay a lot of its foreign debt. Cairo’s foreign reserves have spiked to $28.5bn as of April this year, the highest in six years, according to a cabinet statement at the time, which also revealed that Egypt had attracted $17bn of foreign currency inflow since the flotation of the pound.

Egypt has also benefited from the $12bn loan from the IMF, which also saw it secure up an additional $6bn in bilateral financing in November last year.