Public investments in Minya record LE4.1B during 2020/21

CAIRO – 10 February 2021: Public investments directed to Minya governorate amounted to LE 4.1 billion in 2020/2021, with an increase of 10.8 percent compared to 2019/2020 plan, Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala el-Saeed said.

El-Saeed noted that these investments represent 1.6 percent of distributed public investment.

She indicated that the number of development projects in the governorate reached 327 projects.

This came during a delegation from the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development headed by Assistant Minister for the Follow-up of the Sustainable Development Plan Gamil Helmy’s  field visit to Minya Governorate, which will last from 10 to 11 February, with the aim of ensuring the achievement rates and the absence of obstacles in the villages of the presidential initiative "A Decent Life", in addition to ensuring the quality of implementation according to the specified specifications, ensuring the operation of the completed projects and their entry into service, and identifying the citizens' vision regarding any other required priority projects.

“There is a tendency for the state to reduce development gaps between governorates, which is what the presidential initiative achieves a decent life by focusing on developing the villages most in need,” the minister stated.

She noted that real development takes place at the provincial level and not in a centralized manner; each governorate has a different competitive advantage and has different resources from the others, and that spatial justice is one of the goals of the state's plan.

El-Saeed explained that coordination is taking place with the ministries and relevant authorities to implement the various development initiatives aimed at improving the quality of life of the Egyptian citizen, noting that the total appropriations for the "Decent Life" initiative for the first phase amounted to about 20 billion pounds for 375 villages, benefiting about 4.5 million citizens. 

The initiative aims to cover all the villages of the Egyptian countryside during the next three years, with a total number of beneficiaries of nearly 50 million citizens, and at a total cost of LE 500 billion.

During the visit, Helmy indicated that the number of villages in Minya Governorate within the first phase of a decent life is 25 villages, within the range of 10 centers, with a population of 308 thousand people, constituting 5 percent of the governorate’s population, and the number of interventions that have been completed is 102 interventions, at a total cost of LE 575 million, out of a total targeted appropriation of about LE 1.68 billion, for about 204 targeted interventions.

The Assistant Minister of Planning and Economic Development for Follow-up Affairs of the Sustainable Development Plan continued that the completed interventions in Minya Governorate resulted in two sanitation projects, 3 schools that include 53 classrooms, 1112 lighting poles, 8.7 km of water networks, in addition to paving roads amounting to 4.6 Km, 2 youth centers, 4 health units, raising the efficiency of 333 homes, in addition to literacy for 53 people, and reaching 2,964 beneficiaries from small enterprise loans. 

Helmy indicated that it is targeted to improve the quality-of-life index (the rate of service availability Core in these villages (on average, 26 percentage points).