Egypt’s Minister of Finance Mohamed Maeet has said the state’s public finances are balanced, showing efficient budgetary performance over the past seven months.
The minister’s remarks were made during a conference organized by PwC on taxation.
Maeet told the gathering that Egypt’s finances have achieved good indications of growth, taking into account repercussions of the global exceptional economic challenges and geopolitical tensions in Europe and the Middle East region.
According to him, such repercussions have ushered in a decline in revenues and doubled burdens on public expenditures to meet the state’s obligations to fulfill basic needs of citizens.
These negative impacts resulted from rising prices of goods and services on the back of unprecedented inflationary wave sweeping the entire world,Maeet told the gathering.
However, the state budget posted a primary surplus worth LE173 billion between July 2023 and January 2024, against LE33 billion on the same period in fiscal year 2022/23.Egypt’s fiscal year begins on July 1.
Maeet said the state’s seven-month budget deficit hit 5.8 per cent due to an increase in interest rates.
He pointed out that a number of good indicators reflected an improvement in international investors’ confidence in in Egypt’s economy, citing strong appetite for Egyptian bonds on global markets with falling cost of insurance on these debt instruments.
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