Sisi urges maintaining financial performance to reduce deficit, debt

CAIRO – 18 October 2021: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi urged maintaining performance regarding the general budget indicators, leading to achieve an initial surplus of 1.5 percent.

Sisi made the remarks in a meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli and Finance Minister Mohamed Mait on Monday.

The state’s performance in this regard should also work on reducing the total deficit of the general budget to 6.7 percent and reducing the debt to less than 90 percent, Sisi explained.

The president also urged continuing to support the state’s development projects and meeting the necessary needs of the development sectors, especially in health and education.

During the meeting, Mait said the allocations for all expenditure sections increased during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, especially with regard to providing adequate funding for the implementation of various government investments, especially Haya Karima initiative.

Also, all the needs for the health sector regarding efforts to face the coronavirus pandemic were provided at a value of more than LE 24 billion and with a growth rate of about 35 percent.

Sufficient allocations were also made for all items of social protection programs, including the payment of the dues of the Insurance and Pensions Fund amounting to about LE 45 billion.

This is in addition to spending about LE 47 billion on the education sector, with a growth rate of nearly 20 percent.

The president also followed up on the developments of projects to develop the tax system. He urged the ministry to adhere to complete the projects related to the automation of the tax authority and tax procedure, before the end of the current fiscal year.