Egypt achieves $7.1 billion primary surplus in Q3 – minister

Egypt achieved a primary surplus of 7.1 billion Egyptian pounds ($435.8 million) during the third quarter of the 2019/2020 financial year, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said during a meeting with President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi on Saturday.

The results of the financial performance showed that the governmental investments amounted to 24.9 billion pounds in the same period, of which 22 billion-pound investments funded by the Treasury, with an increase of 20 percent, added Maait.

The public debt is already declining; the ratio of government debt to GDP has dropped from 108 percent at the end of June 2017, to 90.2 percent in June 2019, according to Egypt Today.

Sisi directed to continue exerting efforts to reduce public debt and budget deficit, and to provide a stable environment that promotes confidence in the performance and Egyptian economic ability to attract more investments, said Presidential Spokesperson Bassam Radi in a statement.

On September 12, 2019, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) revealed in its monthly bulletin that domestic public debt rose 18.8 percent or 97 billion pounds at the end of March 2019 to hit 4.2 trillion pounds, up from 3.5 trillion pounds in the same month of the prior year.

The bulletin showed that the domestic public debt represented 79 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of March, compared to 77.1 percent at the end of 2018.