CAIRO: The leading candidate for Egypt’s new presidency, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, aims to cut the Egyptian budget deficit to 8.5 percent of gross domestic product by the fiscal year ending in June 2018 from last year’s 14 percent, his campaign said yesterday.
Sisi, who is widely expected to win presidential elections next week, also targets GDP growth of seven percent by the same fiscal year, a big jump for an economy that grew only about two percent in the last fiscal year.
About the same growth is expected this year, despite two stimulus packages, each worth around 30bn Egyptian pounds ($4.2bn), offered by the interim government since Sisi toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July.
Sisi has not given specifics on how he would reform subsidies, which eat up around a fifth of state spending.
Faster growth would push the unemployment rate down to eight percent, according to the statement posted on Sisi’s campaign website just days before the election. It now stands at more than 13 percent, compared with 8.9 percent before the revolt that swept Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011.
Egyptian Finance Minister Hany Kadry Dimian said on Tuesday the country’s budget deficit would have reached almost 15 percent this fiscal year without aid. Arab Gulf countries pledged over $12bn in aid after Mursi’s ouster.
Dimian said that with aid the deficit would be around 11 percent this fiscal year. The government was working to keep it below 11 percent in the fiscal year starting in July. Without reforms, it would stand at 14 percent of GDP next fiscal year, Dimian said.
Reuters
