The Egyptian Council of Ministers approved the draft budget law for the fiscal year 2020-2021. The Minister of Finance, Dr. Mohamed Maait, indicated that the draft budget for the new fiscal year aims to preserve the greatest degree of financial stability while supporting the economic activity by achieving a reduction of the total deficit to 6.3 percent. From the result, achieving an initial surplus that allows the path of budgetary debt reduction to continue, in addition to backup, supporting and stimulating economic activity, growth, and employment, especially in the productive sectors, in conjunction with continuing efforts to improve the quality of the infrastructure while ensuring that everyone benefits from this improvement.
In turn, the Egyptian Minister of Planning, Hala Al-Saeed, indicated that Egypt had reduced the targeted growth of GDP in the 2019-2020 fiscal year to 5.1 percent, from 5.6 percent due to the Coronavirus crisis.
She explained that Egypt is also targeting 4.5 percent growth in FY 2020-2021, but it may drop to 3.5 percent in the event that the Coronavirus crisis continues until the middle of the fiscal year.
Al-Saeed expected inflation to rise to 9.8 percent if the Coronavirus crisis continues until December 2020, the middle of the fiscal year, due to the high demand for some products such as medical supplies and disinfectants.
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
