Cabinet reviews national economy's indices in Q3 FY 2019/20

CAIRO - 21 May 2020: Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli has chaired a meeting to review a report on the most important indices of the national economy during the Q3 and the first nine months of the fiscal year of 2019/2020.

The videoconference meeting, held on Wednesday, was attended by Planning Minister Hala Al Saeed, who explained that the main sectors of the national economy achieved the expected growth in January and February 2020, compared with the same period one year earlier, prior to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The minister said that it was expected that the growth rate would have reached some 5.9 percent by the end of Q3 of FY 2019/20.

However, the minister pointed out that the achieved growth rate was only about 5 percent due to the repercussions of the Covid-19 which led to slowing down the growth of many activities, including the tourism, industry and retail and wholesale sectors.

Al Saeed detailed that the sectors of industry, retail and wholesale, real estate, construction, contractor and agriculture contributed by some 50 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during the Q3, noting that the contribution of the tourism and industry sectors shrank during this period.

The minister noted that the government investments went up by 23 percent during the period from July 2019 to March 2020, compared with the same period of the previous fiscal year, totaling EGP 113 billion in the vital sectors of housing, health, education, transport, electricity, industry, telecommunications, higher education, scientific research and irrigation, among others.

The report showed that the inflation rate increased from 4.6 percent in March 2020 to 5.9 percent in April 2020 due to the traditional increase in demand for food and beverages in the holy month of Ramadan.

The average inflation rate during the 10 months of the FY 2019/2020 reached 5.3 percent, compared with 13.3 percent in the previous FY.

The non-petroleum trade balance deficit improved during the Q3 by some 24 percent, the report added.