Egypt’s Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy, said that the debt in both the petroleum and electricity sectors in the country have exceeded EGP 900bn, during a press conference on the sidelines of a weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
El-Garhy said that this situation cannot continue, especially with the challenging news that face the world, including the uprising prices of petrol worldwide. He pointed out that now the discussions in the House of Representatives focus on how to deal with debts, reduce the pressures on the budget, and also not to harm monetary policies.
He noted that during the meeting the council of ministers discussed a report on the approval of the House of Representatives on the fiscal year 2018/2019 and the draft of the final budget after its adoption.
In another context, El-Garhy said that the social protection measures announced this week, which include increasing pensions, granting special allowances, exceptional allowances to state employees and workers, increasing the exemption and tax deduction limit, will cost the state treasury about EGP 67bn.
Noteworthy, that earlier late in May, the Prime Minister Sherif Ismail discussed ways to solve the problem of accumulating debts and entitlements of electricity and gas of public sector companies, whereby he decided that the Ministry of Public Business will pay 25% of the indebtedness owed by holding companies that have huge indebtedness and the remaining amount to be paid within 36 months.
