PM meets finance, supply, electricity ministers

CAIRO – 11 July 2017: Prime Minister Sherif Ismail started a meeting with ministers of Finance, Supply and Electricity to follow-up on measures to control hiking prices.

Market prices are expected to be affected as the government introduced in late June new fuel prices where the price of 80-octane gasoline soared from LE 1.60 ($0.08) to LE 3.65 ($0.20) per litre, while 92-octane increased from LE 3.50 ($0.19) to LE 5.00 ($0.28) per liter.

New electricity tariffs also came into force last week with increases between 18 percent and 35 percent across different consumption brackets.

The prices of natural gas for homes and butane gas cylinders were also raised by 50 percent and 100 percent respectively.

To combat negative effect of that decision, the government took a proactive measure to increase spending on social safety nets by LE 75 billion through.

Under the new decisions, the individual's share in ration card would be increased from EGP 21 to EGP 50, increasing allocations of food subsidies in the budget to LE 85 billion, from LE 47 billion in FY2016/2017.