Minister of Finance, Amr El-Garhy said that Egypt has achieved a great improvement in economic conditions that lead to increasing growth rate, decreasing unemployment rate, the reducing the initial deficit by 50% in 2016/2017, which eventually brought back investors confidence.
This came on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation visit to Egypt for the second periodic review of the Egyptian economic reform program.
The delegation’s agenda included more than one meeting with El-Garhy, to discuss the Egyptian economic reform program progress, and the extent to which the agreed economic and financial targets are achieved in preparation for the third tranche of the $2bn IMF loan.
According to El-Garhy, economic growth rates increased reaching 4.8% in Q4 of 2016-2017, unemployment rates decreased reaching 11.9% in June 2017 compared to 12.7% in the same period of the year before.
Furthermore, the initial deficit reduced by 50% in 2016-2017 to reach 1.8% of the GDP compared to 3.6% of GDP in 2015/2016.
The value of foreign exchange reserves increases to record more than $36bn which covers about 7 months of the essential commodity imports, said El-Garhy.
Vice Minister of Finance Ahmed Kouchouk, said that the minister has assured the IMF that it will work to achieve initial surplus through 2017-2018 for the first time since years.
Moreover, Kouchouk assured the IMF delegation that the ministry will work on reducing the government debt to about 98% of GDP.
The discussions also include a presentation of the financial indicators for the Q1 (July-September) of 2017/2018, explaining that the initial deficit during Q1 of the current fiscal year was about 0.2% of GDP compared to 0.6% of GDP during the same period of the last fiscal year.
In addition to the increase of the total revenues by about 33.2% compared to the same period last year, while the total public expenditure increased by 24.4%.
Finance officials assured the IMF delegation that target results for the current fiscal year came within the framework of the government commitment to meet the government’s objectives to decrease the deficit by 5.5% of the GDP within three years.
