Parliamentary, municipal elections to cost Egypt 1.5 billion pounds

The upcoming parliamentary poll and elections across Egypt’s local municipalities are going to cost the country’s government 1.5 billion Egyptian pounds (around $191 billion), the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.

The money will be used to provide all requirements for voting such as printing millions of voting cards and voter rolls and supplying phosphorescent ink in polling stations, Mohamed Abdel Fattah, the director of the general budget sector in the Finance Ministry said in a statement circulated by the ministry.

The spending will be supervised by the ministry and the Central Auditing Agency, he added.

Before yearend, Egypt is slated to hold both parliamentary elections and elections at the level of local municipalities.

The legislative elections for Egypt’s first House of Representatives since 2012, will be held over two phases of voting, the first of which will begin next week and will include 14 provinces.

The second phase of voting in Egypt and abroad will run from Nov. 21-23 and includes the remaining 13 provinces.

The elections were originally planned for last March but were postponed upon a court order.

They mark the final phase of Egypt’s “roadmap to democracy” announced in July 2013 by then-Defence Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

source: Aswat Masriya