Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for increasing market controls and stopping monopoly practices.
Sisi met on Saturday with Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli, a number of ministers, the Central Bank governor, the head of the General Intelligence, and the Chairman of the Administrative Control Authority. Discussions touched on the strategic stock of essential goods and the government’s efforts to provide them to citizens, along with market control and consumer protection measures.
Egyptian presidential spokesman, Ambassador Bassam Radhi, said that Sisi called for “maintaining efforts to provide basic commodities and meet the needs of citizens at appropriate prices through an integrated strategy that includes strict control of the markets, eliminating monopolistic practices and tightening price controls, especially in deprived areas.”
According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), some 30 million Egyptians (about 28 percent of the total population) were living below the poverty line until 2015.
Meanwhile, Minister of Planning, Dr. Hala Al-Saeed, said that the criteria for the "most deprived" villages have been set to have a population of 5,000 or more, pointing out that about LE1.2 billion (about USD69 billion) will be allocated within the 2018-2019 financial year plan to develop these areas.
In a statement, Saeed noted that the development plan adopted by the government would target the various provinces, adding that differences between unemployment rates, population, and youth rates among each governorate were taken into account when advancing the development program.
