Sisi: Achieving balance between population, economic growth rates at core of family development project

CAIRO – 4 May: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi directed officials to ensure that achieving balance between population and economic growth rates is the major objective of the national project to develop the Egyptian family.

Major objectives of the national project should also include upgrading population characteristics, President Sisi underlined.

The president made the remarks Tuesday during a meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Mabouli in the presence of Planning Minister Hala el Saeed, Health Minister Hala Zayed and Social Solidarity Minister Nivine El-Kabbag.

The meeting was also attended by Presidential Adviser for Health Affairs Mohamed Awad Tag eldin and President of the National Council for Women Maya Morsi.

Sisi ordered integrating efforts of all bodies concerned in this regard to manage the population issue via a global perspective in a way that helps promote the quality of citizens’ lives at the health, social, family and economic levels.

Sisi asserted the importance of developing precise data bases to help achieve effective communication with all social strata, highlighting the possibility of benefiting in this regard from the ongoing efforts of Decent Life initiative.

The meeting touched on the developments related to the national project to develop the Egyptian family as well as its proposed implementation plan, presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said.

The project's plan is based on several areas related to economic empowerment, service intervention, offering raising-awareness, education and cultural programs and digitization in addition to the legislative framework, he added

Earlier in March, Egypt’s Ministry of Health said that the country is witnessing a nutritional gap of 50 percent due to over population.

The ministry added that Egypt imports 50 percent of its food items, saying that the ministry is preparing a major campaign aiming to raise awareness of the public.

According to Dr. Tariq Tawfik, the religious clerics will play an important role in the campaign to convince citizens with the necessity family planning programs.

He further pointed out that the agricultural area has decreased dramatically due to the increase in population, as it used to be 6 citizens per acre, now it has become 17 citizens per acre. From 2000 to 2016, the size of the agricultural area in the Delta and Valley has been reduced by 350 thousand feddans.

In February, Egypt’s Dar al-Iftaa launched on its official pages on Facebook and Twitter a hashtag that reads “Birth Control is permissible,” to ensure that family planning and birth control methods are not religiously forbidden as some people think.