Average Egypt debt at 46,656 pounds per person

By Ahmed Ali On Jun 25, 2018

An Egyptian man carries a bread tray in Cairo on Nov. 4, 2018. With the economy in crisis, prices have soared and many Egyptians are struggling to buy even basic goods. (Photo: Amr Nabil/ The Associate Press)

The average debt per capita of Egypt reached 46,656 Egyptian pounds ($2,607.84) at the end of 2017, according to a recent report by the central bank.

Egypt’s domestic debt, was estimated at 3.414.4 trillion pounds at the end of December 2017, around 83.8 percent of GDP, the central bank’s latest data showed. If Egyptians wanted to pay off their country’s domestic debt, they would owe around 32,580 pounds each.

External debt reached $82.884.5 billion at the end of December 2017, an average of $790.8 per capita, and 36.1 percent of GDP.

Last May, former Egyptian Minister of Finance Amr el-Garhy said at an IMF conference in Cairo that the government was working on a medium-term plan to decline the public debt from 107-108 percent in financial year 2016/2017 to reach 80 percent by 2020. Garhy clarified that the targeted decline will be reached through decreasing the budget deficit, achieving a primary surplus of 2 percent of GDP and increasing average per capita income.