Finance Ministry: Harvard's CID report reflects success of Egypt's economic reform program

CAIRO - 20 August 2019: The Finance Ministry asserted on Tuesday that a report, issued by the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University that expected Egypt to become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, demonstrated the success of the Economic Reform Program adopted by the Egyptian government.

Egypt's economy is forecast to grow at a 6.8% clip per year over the next 10 years, placing it among the top of the list of the fastest-growing economies until 2027, according to the Harvard Center for International Development's 2027 Growth Projections.

In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said that the report also reflected the diversity and development of the productive capacity of Egypt.

The unprecedented national projects that are currently implemented in Egypt in the various domains reflected Egypt's keenness on expanding value-added economic activities, the statement said.

It added the second phase of the nationwide project, which is being carried out with the National Company for Protected Agriculture and was recently opened by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, is a technological and agricultural revolution that doubled productivity in line with the latest international standards for quality management.

Also expected to hit annual growth rates of at least 6 percent are Myanmar, Uganda, China, and Vietnam, the report said.

Harvard’s projections are based on a measure of "Economic Complexity," which accounts for the diverse and sophisticated production involved in each country’s exports.

"What unites Uganda, Egypt, China, Vietnam, and Tanzania as the fastest-growing countries in the projection is not that they uniformly share the same education level, geographic region, religion, or any measure of institutional quality. Rather, each country has a more sophisticated range of specialized knowhow than expected or its income that will drive diversification and growth," according to the report.

Egypt ranks 68th on the Economic Complexity Index, it added.

Egypt has moved up two places in the Economic Complexity Index due to export diversification increasing complexity of the country’s economy, according to the report.

Harvard projects that Egypt will continue along the same trajectory in the years to come as it further diversifies production.