The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report (HDR) is one of the most important international reports that monitor the status of human development, according to Egypt’s Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said.
UNDP launched on Tuesday its HDR in Egypt for 2021 during a ceremony attended by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly in the New Administrative Capital.
El-Said said Egypt was one of the first countries that documented the status of local human development; noting that 11 HDRs have been issued since 1994, and this year’s report is the 12th edition.
She pointed out that the Human Development Report was first issued in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub-ul-Haq and Indian thinker Amartya Sen; Nobel laureate in economics.
El-Said emphasized that human development reports contribute to strengthening national capacities to collect and analyze data related to human development and raise awareness of human development issues.
El-Said said that the key to the work that we celebrate launching today is the term partnership; this partnership is present in the report’s title “Development is a right for all”, as gathering benefits the sharing of development efforts and its returns.
The minister added that the report reflects the capacity of the Egyptian state and its keenness to produce and make data available. The report also deals in depth with all development issues and their concerns. This makes him an accurate observer of the state of development in Egypt, with its challenges and achievements.
El-Said pointed out that the Egypt Human Development Report in 2021 came to monitor the march of a full decade of the life of the country and to draw the path for a “Good and bright future, that we work with determination to achieve.”
The work started seven years ago, based on comprehensive planning and an ambitious vision for the future, the features of which were defined by the “Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt’s Vision 2030” as the national version of the UN goals to achieve sustainable development.
El-Said said that the state understands that achieving economic growth and improving economic indicators and recovery; will not have value unless it is positively reflected on the quality of citizen’s lives, which is consistent with the concept adopted by UNDP from 1990 to define and measure development.
She added that the Egyptian state seeks to mobilize all available capabilities and resources to expand public investments, which increased by more than sevenfold between 2014 and 2021, to implement major development projects and initiatives in all sectors.
El-Said also referred to the presidential initiative for the development of the Egyptian countryside, “Decent Life”, which targets more than half of Egypt’s population in villages and rural areas.
“It is a purely Egyptian development experience; the initiative is considered the largest comprehensive and integrated development initiative in the world, both in terms of the size of its financial allocations or the size of its beneficiaries,” Egypt’s Planning Minister explained.
She confirmed that all these efforts resulted in many positive indicators, especially in high growth rates, declining unemployment rates, and low inflation.
“A trilogy that experts and those concerned with economic affairs know the difficulty of achieving together until a new challenge emerges, represented in the spread of COVID-19,” she said.
El-Said pointed out that the reform efforts achieved by the Egyptian state in recent years have been credited with enhancing the ability of the Egyptian economy to withstand this pandemic, so the Egyptian experience in dealing with the pandemic has received international praise.
She added that Egypt is working to confront many challenges, foremost of which are climate change and population growth, which increases the imbalance between the size of the population and the available resources and negatively affects the per capita share of development returns.
