Egypt is one of the countries in Middle East most affected by the political conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It has been recently facing an economic crisis that caused its currency to depreciate by about 36%. According to a Bloomberg report, the country has also been suffering from an overhang in commodities that has helped fuel demand for the US currency on the black market. The scarcity of hard currency in Egypt has affected market supplies and caused a sharp increase in prices. To preserve the country’s currency, the government imposed restrictions on imports. This created a large backlog of goods at Egypt's ports. “The ports had goods worth about $15-16 billion until the end of November,” said Mostafa Madbouly, Egypt's prime minister. However, the government has been exerting major efforts to clear the backlog of goods. “We worked with the Central Bank and the banking sector, and we succeeded in releasing $5 billion worth of goods from the beginning of the month until December 23,” added the prime minister. According to local media, Egypt released another volume of imports worth $1.2 billion last week and the remaining amount is now valued at $9.5 billion. Egyptian news portal Ahram Online reported that the government formulated a plan to release the remaining goods and to secure its foreign exchange resources beyond the fiscal year, which ends on 30 June. As the process of clearing the ports moves on, the government announced it will give priority to food products, food manufacturing components, medicines and production requirements. The volume of goods to be released from the ports in the upcoming period will be announced on a weekly basis, according to local media.