Egypt aims to achieve a steady economic growth rate of 6 percent during the fiscal year 2019-2020, up from the current 5.6 percent, announced Egyptian Minister of Planning Hala al-Saeed.
The aim is to reach 7.2 percent by the end of the fiscal year 2022-2023, she told parliament while presenting a draft of the sustainable development plan for the FY 2019-2020.
The statement was referred to parliament’s budget and planning committee for review and discussion.
In achieving a high and sustainable growth rate, the plan aims to boost promising economic activities with high productivity and rapid growth, namely those that interrelate and depend on other sectors and activities, said Saeed.
She reviewed growth rates of various sectors with 15 percent for communications, 9 percent for construction, followed by three sectors with growth rates of around 5 percent each: manufacturing, the Suez Canal and electricity.
Saeed explained that the plan aims to continue the structural transformation of the economic growth sources with increased reliance on investment and net change in exports. She noted that in light of this high economic growth, gross domestic product (gdp) is expected to surge within the plan’s year to about EGP 6.3 trillion with current prices and closing in on EGP 4.1 trillion at constant prices.
The plan seeks to increase total investment to 18.6 percent from 17.3 percent in the year 2018-2019, she continued, adding that the 2019-2020 plan is aimed at achieving total investments of EGP 1.17 trillion, with a 27 percent increase.
She noted that the plan takes into account balancing between the goals of human building and improving the quality of life when considering the distribution of sectoral investments, so that the commodity sector group is about 40 percent, services sectors about 34 percent and social and human services sectors about 26 percent.
In the statement, Saeed pointed to the achievements of the Egyptian economy during the past four years, with the growth rate exceeding the 5 percent mark, unemployment falling below 9 percent and the inflation falling to 13.8 percent in March.
Results of the first half of 2018–2019 revealed the completion of 1,133 projects in 20 sectors at a total cost of EGP 311 billion.
