The total amount of subsidies increased during July and August of fiscal year (FY) 2015/2016 to EGP 15.8bn, compared to EGP 5.3bn in the same period of FY 2014/2015, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) revealed.
In its monthly bulletin issued Saturday, CAPMAS explained the General Authority for Supply commodities (GASC) acquired the largest subsidy volume, recording EGP 8.3bn over July and August of FY 2015/2016, compared to EGP 4.4bn in FY 2014/2015.
The government is currently restructuring the subsidies system to reach the most deserving segments of society by gradually eliminating them to alleviate the burden on the state’s budget. The budget surplus will be targeted to strengthen the social protection and security networks and provide conditional cash subsidy to the lowest income families.
According to the bulletin, the government’s financial institutes acquired EGP 800m in subsidies from July to August in the current FY, compared to EGP 100m acquired during the same period last year. Meanwhile, “other sources” received a volume of subsidies amounting to EGP 6.7bn compared to EGP 800m.
CAPMAS highlighted that the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) did not receive any subsidies during July and August 2015/2016, as was the case in 2014/2015.
Regarding the total bank deposits, CAPMAS revealed the volume of deposits increased last August to reach EGP 1.809tn, compared to EGP 1.478tn, recorded in August 2014.
A number of banks recently issued a 5%- interest- investment certificates paid monthly to collect more savings and attract dollar holders to sell them and buy investment certificates in Egyptian pounds. This would ease the selling pressure on the pound.
The leading banks that issued these investment certificates are the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and Banque Misr, the two largest banks in the market in terms of assets’ volume.
The report also revealed that the non-governmental deposits volume amounted to EGP 1.533tn last August, EGP 1.255tn of which are in local currency and EGP 278.3bn exchanged from foreign currencies. Over the same period last year, the deposits recorded EGP 1.286tn, of which EGP 1.44tn were in local currency and EGP 242.4bn were exchanged from foreign currencies.
