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Asharq Al-Awsat
Asharq Al-Awsat
Business
Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat

Egypt Aims to Reduce Debt Rate to Below 90% of GDP by 2025

Egypt’s Finance Minister Mohamed Maait and his aides during their meeting on Saturday with officials from The Bank of America via video conference. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Egypt aims to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio from 90% by the end of the current fiscal year to 85% by 2025, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said on Saturday.

It also seeks a primary surplus of 1.3% and targets reducing the budget deficit to 6.2%, he added in a press statement.

The minister said Egypt has achieved a strong growth rate of nine percent of GDP in the first half of the current fiscal year despite all the negative repercussions of coronavirus pandemic, and the ensuing disruption in supply chains, a sharp inflationary wave and surge in prices of goods and services.

He added that the government aims to achieve a growth rate of 5.7 percent of the gross domestic product by the end of the fiscal year in June, in light of the severe global economic effects that most of the world’s economies are suffering from as a result of the current Russian-Ukrainian crisis.

Maait attributed Egypt’s resilience in the face of global and local economic shocks to the economic reform undertaken by the government.

He said these reforms helped improve financial and economic indicators and created an attractive environment for investors, encouraging the private sector to expand its participation in the development process.

He also pointed out that tax revenues increased by 13.6% between July and February 2022, hoping this rate would increase by the end of the current fiscal year.

The Finance Ministry has taken into consideration the current global economic challenges in its budget for FY2022/23.

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