El-Morsi Expects EGP31.2 bln Extra Resources In Budget During 2013

The Egyptian Minister of Finance, El-Morsi Hegazy, has emphasized that the Egyptian economy is capable of overcoming the current fiscal crisis; calling on all the political and public powers to resolve their disputes and agree on a national reform for financial and economic reform meets the ambitions of the society.

The minister stated that the estimates of the Finance Ministry elucidate that the tax adjustments, the rationing procedures, and enhancing Egypt’s investment climate through finding new fiscal tools like Sukuk will contribute to achieving extra resources to the General Budget, about EGP 31.2 billion for the current fiscal year; representing 1.8% of the GDP to reach EGP 104 billion during the fiscal year 2013/2014, as to 5% of Egypt’s GDP.

The government is planning to allocate 10% of these extra revenues to the social protection programs for the needy classes. The social solidarity programs will come first, by which about 2 millions will make use of it at the end of the coming fiscal year 2013/2014.

El-Morsi added that the program also targets enhancing the budget of the free medicines for the citizens, subsidizing baby formula, school feeding and low-cost housing.

The minister has referred that the biggest share of the attained revenue will help in decreasing the budget deficit to 5% of Egypt’s GDP by 2016/2017, in return for 10.8% during the fiscal year 2011/2012. This will lessen the general debt to go down by 85% of the Egyptian GDP by 2016/2017.

As for the Sukuk file, the minister confirmed that Sukuk is one of the new fiscal tools that successfully received in the Arab and Global levels, and represent a real add to the tools capable of attracting more savings and flows of funds from abroad to positively  influence on increasing the volume of the fiscal market in Egypt.