Minister of finance to sign an IMF US$ 3.2 bn loan agreement next month
Momtaz El-Saeed, Finance Minister, said that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission will arrive in Cairo in next March, and will be headed by Masood Ahmed, Director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, who will sign a memorandum of understanding about lending Egypt US$ 3.2 billion.
Egypt will receive this loan in 3 payments, third of which will be after the signing, the second third will be paid after 3 months and the last third will be after another 3 months. The interest rate of the loan is 1.2%. The loan will support the resources of the next year budget 2012/2013 and partially compensate Egypt’s foreign reserves, which were decreased to US$ 16 billion.
The government is currently negotiating with World Bank over a US$ one billion soft loan, while there is not any news about the economic aids Gulf countries promised to give from over a year.
The minister assured that the government started implementing final procedures to appoint 500 thousand temporary employees in different State’s departments. The problem of financing the cost of these appointments is partially resolved through getting the interests from private and managed funds, which have EGP 36.1 billion, deposited in the general treasury account in the Central Bank. The cost of these appointments is EGP 5 billion annually. The temporary employees will be finally appointed gradually in 3 years. 150 thousand temporary employees will be fully appointed in 2012/2013. After appointment, the employee will get EGP 700 as a minimum limit of wage, to which annual increases and bonuses will be added. It is worth mentioning that the wage of the temporary employee may be less than EGP 100.
Ministry of Finance demanded from the National Investment Bank to transfer EGP 250 thousand monthly to pension funds so as to provide the needed cash liquidity for pensions. Ganzouri government approved a 10% increase in pensions from past January. This increase will be paid from next March as a maximum time limit. The value of pensions in the budget of the current year is EGP 65 billion, part of which is financed by the return of pensions Sukuk and monthly subscriptions.
Amwal Alghad
