Economic reforms enabled Egypt to face shortages in supplies, high shipping costs

CAIRO – 9 November 2021: The Egyptian Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maait, affirmed that economic reforms have made the Egyptian economy more able to contain the repercussions of the emerging market crisis, the Corona pandemic, the global supply shortage crisis and the rise in shipping costs.

Maait explained in a statement Tuesday that the economic growth rate during 2020/2021 amounted to 3.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), and the total deficit decreased to 7.4 percent of GDP, and a primary surplus of 1.46 percent was achieved.

“Egypt was one of the best countries in reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio by 20 percent during the three years before the "pandemic", as the debt ratio declined from 108 percent in 2016-2017 to 87.5 percent at the end of the 2019-2020 fiscal year,” he added

He pointed out that the average global indebtedness of emerging countries increased to 17 percent and major countries to 20 percent during the pandemic, while the ratio of debt to Egypt's domestic product witnessed a slight increase despite the unprecedented development policies adopted by Egypt, where the debt rate reached about 91 percent by the end of the fiscal year 2020- 2021, which is lower than the rate recorded for some European countries.

The minister also referred to the government's endeavor to adopt a medium-term strategy; In order to maintain the downward path of debt service, which fell from 40 percent of the total budget at the end of 2020 to 36 percent in June 2021, with a target of 32 percent of the total budget during the current fiscal year budget.