32.5% of Egyptians live in extreme poverty: CAPMAS

CAIRO – 1 August 2019: The percentage of Egyptians, who live in extreme poverty, rose to 32.5 in 2018 from 27.8 percent in 2015, with an increase of 4.7 percent, said State-owned Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAMPAS) on Tuesday.

According to CAPMAS’s latest survey on income, expenditure and consumption for 2017/2018, Egypt announced that he who earns less than LE 8,282 (US$ 501.03) annually and $1.3 daily, lives under poverty line.

The highest percentage of poverty among 99 million Egyptians was recorded in Upper Egypt, mainly in Assuit and Sohag, with 66.7 percent and 59.6 percent respectively, the survey revealed, adding that poverty rates ranged from 80 to 100 percent in about 46 villages in these two governorates.

In 2015, the World Bank announced that the international extreme poverty threshold is set at $1.9 per day, saying that as of 2015, 700 million people have lived in extreme poverty worldwide. The World Bank has set the poverty line at $3.20 per day for lower-middle-income countries, such as Egypt and India.

The increasing rate of poor Egyptians came following the austerity measures taken by the Egyptian government to meet the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditions. Egypt devaluated its currency against US dollar in 2016, and has applied a plan to gradually remove the subsidizes on fuel, basic commodities and public transportations.

“Poverty rates could be higher without applying the economic reform that is being applied by the state,” said Minister of Planning Hala al-Saeed in comments to CNBC Arabia on Tuesday.

At the seventh edition of the National Youth Conference in the newly constructed Administrative Capital on Wednesday, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said that People in Egypt are not poor, unlike what is being believed by people.