Egypt's CAPMAS releases figures on houses built in 1 year

CAIRO – 3 May 2022: The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) released Tuesday figures on residential units built in FY2020/2021.

The number of those amounted to 316,027, so as the public and private sectors constructed 146,229 units and 169,798 units, respectively.

As for the segments targeted, 48 were built for low-income citizens; 148,787 for low-middle-income citizens; 123,705 for middle-middle-income citizens; 17,144 for high-middle-income citizens; and, 26,343 for high-income citizens.

The government announced in 2021 that it is building 500,000 residential units for citizens, who are not eligible to social housing, which is subsidized. That is due to a shortage in supply by the private sector, whose most products are luxurious houses worth millions of pounds each.

On the other hand, the government has been granting slum-dwellers fully-furnished residential units within alternative-housing projects.

Executive Director of Slum Development Fund Khaled Seddik stated in July that the cost of developing unplanned areas is L.E.318 billion, while that of slums development is L.E.44 billion. He noted that the number of slums in Egypt had reached 357 areas.

Between 2014 and 2021, LE63 billion were spent on urban development in Upper Egypt alone. According to previous statements by the deputy housing minister for national projects, the breakdown is as follows: LE 13.2 billion on the construction of 130,892 residential units; LE 389 million on eliminating 94 slums and providing residents with 36,869 alternative-housing units; LE 11.3 billion on roads extending on a total of 931 kilometers; and LE 34.5 billion on utilities.

Those include 271 projects pertaining to introducing water supply and wastewater networks in some areas, and 1,654 projects pertinent to the renovation of existing ones. In addition, 412 civil service buildings were built at LE 3.6 billion.

The share of constructions in Egypt's GDP is 14 percent, which is the highest in sectoral terms. The figure goes hand in hand with the government's orientation towards expanding urbanization so it would occupy 14 percent of Egypt's surface area up from seven percent.