During the activities of Egypt’s Economic Conference 2022 … Minister of Planning and Economic Development reviews the state’s policies to enhance the capacity of the Egyptian economy to face crises

H.E. Dr. Hala El-Said, Egypt’s Minister of Planning & Economic Development attended on Sunday 23-10-2022 the session of Egypt Economic Conference 2022, which is organized by the government in the New Administrative Capital for three days.
During the session entitled "Policies required to enhance the capacity of the Egyptian economy to face crises", E-Said reviewed the development experience of Egypt.
During her speech at the session, Dr. Hala El-Said said that the evaluation of the development experience in Egypt and the future outlook should not be carried out in isolation from the surrounding international changes.El-Said explained that the global crisis caused many losses worldwide, including an increase in global unemployment, which reached 228 million citizens by the end of this year, in addition to a sharp rise in global debt-to-GDP ratios by about 350%.
About the rate of economic growth in Egypt, El-Said explained that although the real growth rates of the Egyptian economy reached positive and high rates, it was not sustainable, because it was growth driven by private consumption until the middle of the last decade.El-Said stressed that the main objective of growth is to provide decent job opportunities, and unemployment levels have reached their lowest level over the past twenty years at 7.2%, down from 13%, despite the repercussions of the global crisis. El-Said explained that there is a real challenge, which is the high rate of unemployment for those with higher qualifications which reaches 15%, and female unemployment is three times higher than that of youth.


El-Said referred to the successive economic reform programs in Egypt, starting from 1991 until the economic reform program in 2016, during which the state implemented financial, monetary, and legislative reform.
El-Said highlighted the Egyptian government's launch of a structural reform program for the first time, which targets the productive sectors of industry, agriculture, and information technology.
The program will increase the resilience of the Egyptian economy and make it susceptible to shocks because it will be a real, knowledge-based, and competitive economy.
The program aims to increase the percentage of the productive sectors’ contribution to growth, as it was 26% in 2019/2020, and it is targeted to reach 35% in 2024/23, and it has already reached 30%.El-Said highlighted the increase in the proportion of Egyptian industrial exports with a high technological component, which can compete in international markets, in addition to the improvement of Egypt's ranking in the global food security index and the increase in contract farming. El-Said explained that the sectors of industry, agriculture, and information technology were chosen in the structural reforms program because they are promising sectors capable of rapid growth, their relative weight in the domestic product is large, and they can intertwine with the rest of the sectors.El-Said pointed to the pillar of raising the efficiency and flexibility of the labor market and developing the technical education and vocational training system in partnership with the private sector, explaining that there is a gap between the outputs of the educational process and the needs of the labor market.About the pillar of improving the business environment and enhancing the role of the private sector, El-Said explained the development of public and private sector investments from the total investments, as the proportion of public investments in 19/2020 reached 62%, and private investments reached 38%.
 El-Said pointed out that the percentage of workers in the private sector reached 78.4%.
El-Said addressed the measures taken to empower the private sector in economic activity, which are represented in the document regulating state ownership, the policy of competitive neutrality, and the establishment of the Sovereign Fund of Egypt.
This is in addition to amending the partnership with the Private Sector Law No. 67 of 2010, activating some articles of the investment law related to green incentives, and transforming the Suez Canal Economic Zone into a global industrial and logistical center.

Concerning the human capital development pillar, El-Said referred to the "Decent Life" initiative, which is a practical application of the multidimensional poverty index and includes all 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs).
 El-Said stressed that the initiative is the largest development project in the world and aims to improve the level of infrastructure and urban services, improve the quality of human development services, as well as achieve economic development and employment.
El-Said referred to the national project for the development of the Egyptian family, through which, for the first time, the population issue is dealt with from a comprehensive development perspective.
 The project aims to improve the quality of life of citizens by controlling population growth and improving population characteristics, pointing to the development of the per capita share of public investments, which reached 90 times during the past forty years and was mainly reflected in the quality of the various services provided by the state to citizens.
Regarding green public investments, last year green public investments reached 30%, however, the state aims to reach 50% next year.  All these investments contributed to improving Egypt's position in the World Human Development Report 2021/2022, as Egypt jumped 19 places in the Global Human Development Index and reached 97th place in the report.
El-Said pointed to the process of updating Egypt's Vision 2030 to keep pace with local and international changes and developments as a living document and to emphasize the consistency and interdependence between the strategic goals of the vision and the international sustainable development goals of Africa's Agenda 2063.