Budget deficit to reach 4% by 2022: Garhy

CAIRO – 18 July 2017: Budget of F\Y 2017-2018 seeks to decrease budget deficit to be around 9.1 percent and 9.3 percent from GDB in parallel with balancing initial deficit and increasing the growth rate by 4.6 percent, Minister of Finance Amr Al-Garhy said on Monday.

“We hope the budget deficit reaches a rate of 4 percent by 2022, growth rate in the first years of January 25 revolution ranged between 1.5 percent and 2 percent which caused a big budget deficit in the next years,” Garhy added during a meeting with newly appointed 44 ambassadors.

He added that the delay in dealing with numbers of vital issues, especially energy, subsides and currency prices issues has led to the loss of hundreds of billions and deterioration of Egypt's economic condition, while imports volume jumped to $70 billion, and the exports declined. All these factors have led to the budget deficit and a decline of foreign investments.