Egypt’s Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait has announced that electronic payments (e-payments) made in the past 23 months to suppliers and state employee salaries were recorded at EGP 628bn and EGP 377bn, respectively.
Maait said the system of e-payment and the collection of government dues has performed strongly since its inception until March 2021.
The minister added that these total government e-payments to suppliers and state employees through the advanced system took place in addition to 13.5 million transactions worth EGP 37bn using government electronic collection points.
He further noted that no additional fees are collected from citizens when paying government dues electronically. This is due to the state’s public treasury bearing commissions decided for the electronic payment service through collection machines.
Maait added that the total number of transactions made through the citizen payment mechanism in Cairo and the governorates since its implementation in May 2019 until March 2020 amounted to approximately 529,000 transactions with a total value of EGP 54bn.
The minister said that this mechanism is subject to continuous development as it is a means of non-cash payment of dues that exceed EGP 10,000. It has been extended to 4,000 post offices across the country, in addition to: the National Bank of Egypt (NBE); Banque Du Caire; Banque Misr; the Commercial International Bank (CIB); the Arab African International Bank (AAIB); the Agricultural Bank of Egypt (ABE); the Arab Bank; the National Bank of Greece; United Bank; QNB Alahli; and HSBC among others.
The extension was put in place to help facilitate citizens, especially those living in remote areas who were forced to move to cities to benefit from electronic collection services.
Maait said that about 19,861 GPOs were deployed at administrative authorities, with Cairo receiving the most machines. The distribution took into account geographical distribution, budgetary sector, and employment.
Mohamed Fouad, head of the Electronic Payment and Collections Unit at the Ministry of Finance, said that a study is currently underway to build a billing platform for electronic government receipts on the Internet.
This aims to allow citizens to enquire about government services fees or fees owed to each government agency, so that they can pay through one of the electronic payment and collection channels available.
