Egyptian inflation is expected to have eased to 24.2% in December as food prices continued to cool, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

The median forecast of 13 analysts polled by Reuters was for annual urban consumer inflation to have edged down to 24.2% from 25.5% in November. The data was collected from January 6 to January 8.

"We expect December inflation to decelerate to 24.1% year-on-year and 0.2% month-on-month, on relatively lower to stable vegetable and fruit prices due to seasonality," said Heba Monir of HC Securities.

Inflation picked up in August, September and October, but declined in November and is well below an all-time peak of 38% hit in September 2023.

Inflation has been fuelled in part by rapid growth in the money supply. M2 money supply expanded by 29.06% in the year to end-November, slightly below an all-time high of 29.59% in the year to end-September, central bank data showed.

Egypt signed an $8-billion financial support package with the International Monetary Fund in March designed to help it narrow its budget deficit and adopt a less inflationary monetary policy. However, the package requires the government to cut subsidies on some domestic items, pushing up their price.

The government statistics agency CAPMAS is due to release inflation figures on Thursday morning.