Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has called for maintaining good economic performance rates in order to promote economic and monetary stability in parallel with regularly checking and updating the mechanisms of governance for the gross domestic product (GDP) data.
The President’s remarks came as he conferred Sunday with Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait, Deputy Finance Minister for Financial Policies Ahmed Kjok and Deputy Finance Minister for the Public Treasury Ihab Abu Aish, Presidency Spokesman Ambassador Bassam Radi said.
During the meeting, the President highlighted the importance of monitoring all aspects of the comprehensive development process in Egypt in the light of the financial system and integrated work mechanisms that reflect the economic status and the actual performance of the developmental process.
Sisi also urged further increasing financial allocations for public investments in a way that helps enhance the volume of investments to meet developmental needs as part of achieving the objectives of “Egypt Vision 2023” in order to lay the foundations for comprehensive and sustainable development.
President Sisi, meanwhile, gave directives for the completion of procedures for restructuring and modernizing the Customs Authority, including honing skills of human capabilities, using modern technologies in the governance of customs ports as well as developing technological infrastructure to enhance the connectivity of customs ports.
The President urged in this regard accelerating the automation of customs procedures and generalizing a one-stop-shop system in all ports with the aim of simplifying procedures and cutting customs clearance time, thereby reducing the cost of the import and export processes.
In a briefing to the President during the meeting,, Finance Minister Maait reviewed a number of important financial indicators related to improving economic growth rates as the government succeeded in increasing state revenues by 119 billion Egyptian pounds, with a growth rate of 12.2 percent.
The government, the Finance Minister said in the briefing, posted a primary budget surplus of about 93.1 billion Egyptian pounds, or 1.4 percent of GDP, while reducing the total deficit from 8 percent to 7.4 percent.
Minister Maait also noted that Egypt came among the world’s best countries in reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio in spite of the coronavirus pandemic which affected economic growth rates, revenues and expenditures and led many countries to increase debt rates.
Egypt, he added, succeeded in raising the efficiency of public debt management by diversifying its domestic and international instruments and the debt-to-GDP in Egypt declined from 108% during FY2016/2017 to 90.6% by the end of the fiscal year 2020/2021.
