WB downgrades Egypt’s GDP growth forecast to 3.0% during 2019/21

World Bank downgrades Egypt’s GDP growth forecast to 3.0 percent for the fiscal year ending this month down from expected 5.9 percent

The World Bank expects Egypt’s economy to end the current fiscal year — which comes to a close on 30 June — with 3.0% growth, down from the 5.9% the bank had penciled in earlier this year.

According to the World Bank’s June 2020 Global Economic Prospects report, the growth Egypt will achieve in FY2019-2020 will be buoyed by “generally supportive activity” before the onset of the pandemic, which has since been disrupted.

The economy will expand at a slower pace of 2.1 percent in FY2020-2021. The World Bank had previously expected 6.0 percent growth in Egypt next fiscal year.

Egypt and Djibouti are the only two MENA countries whose economies will not contract this fiscal year, and Egypt’s forecasted growth this fiscal year is more than double Djibouti’s 1.3%.

The region’s oil importers (including Egypt) are expected to fare better than oil exporters this year and next, but their economies remain reliant on tourism activity, leaving them vulnerable due to an anticipated drop in arrivals from key source areas, including Europe. The report also expects investments and exports to contract “amid weak global and domestic confidence and high policy uncertainty.”

The report sees emerging markets and developing economies turning in their weakest showing in 60 years this year, with a projected 2.5 percent contraction in 2020. “The current global recession is also unique in that global growth forecasts have been revised down more steeply and rapidly than in any other recessions since at least 1990