Gov't investment hits LE 324B in last 2 years

CAIRO – 17 November 2020: The Egyptian Cabinet estimated the total government investments implemented during the period from July 2018 to June 2020 at LE 324 billion.

In the periodic follow-up report of the government's work program, which the Council submitted to Parliament, Tuesday, it said that the measures taken by the government contributed to reducing the impact of the slowdown in the rate of economic growth in light of the circumstances and crises, the most dangerous of which is the Corona crisis.

According to the Cabinet, some economic activities maintained positive growth rates despite the crisis, and about 7,320 projects were fully implemented, since the launch of the government program in July 2018 until the end of December 2019, with an investment cost of LE 591 billion.

The projects completed in the past 1.5 year cover 23 sectors in all governorates of the Republic, most notably 28 projects in the petroleum sector at a cost of LE 346 billion, 369 projects in the electricity and renewable energy sector at a cost of LE 80 billion, and 498 projects in the housing sector at a cost of LE 56 billion.

The education and health sectors witnessed the completion of the implementation of 1228 projects at an investment cost of LE10.5 billion pounds, 2,330 projects in Upper Egypt at a cost of LE 50 billion, and 650 projects in the border governorates at a cost of LE 17.5 billion were completed.

The report said that the government's development policies have succeeded in containing inflationary pressures, controlling food commodity prices, as well as increasing production and supply of strategic commodities in the market.

It referred to the reforms implemented in the field of improving the efficiency of tax and customs collection, the most prominent of which is the expansion of the programs for integrating the informal sector into the national economy, as the number of companies and institutions that have been merged during the past two years reached 437.8 thousand companies, as well as reconciliation in 2808 tax cases, raising  the number of registered financiers to 9.7 million as part of efforts to expand the tax base.

The report stated that the Egypt Sovereign Fund Law was approved in August 2018, and in November 2019 the Fund achieved the first huge foreign investment, after announcing the establishment of a joint strategic investment platform between Egypt and the UAE worth $ 20 billion. It added that the Fund entered the global ranking of sovereign funds to rank 43 globally.

According to the report, the government has expanded project financing in a partnership system between the public and private sectors, as 3 projects have been proposed during the past two years, namely: the dry port project in the sixth of October, the new building project for Ain Shams University in transit, and a project to implement 24 schools with a total investment value estimated at about LE 2.6 billion.