Planning Minister discusses a parliamentarian report on the FY2021/2022 economic, social development draft plan

Low unemployment and positive growth confirms the strength of the Egyptian economy: Says Hala El-Said


Egypt’s Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Dr. Hala El-Said discussed on Monday the report of the Plan and Budget Committee on the draft economic and social development plan for the fiscal year 21/2022.

 The fiscal year 21/2022 represents the fourth year of the medium-term sustainable development plan (2018/2019 - 2021/2022) before the Parliament.

El-Said referred to the efforts made by the ministry and the government in the past years to achieve comprehensive and sustainable development, in light of the ministry's utmost importance to directing the investment plan towards the priorities of the Egyptian state's work to improve the quality of life for citizens.

The development efforts also included targeting the villages most in need and reducing development gaps between the Egyptian regions and governorates, as the total public investments amounted to EGP 2.4 trillion in the last five years (16/2017-20/2021), with an increased rate of 275% compared to the previous five years.

El-Said pointed out that the total investments being implemented in the current year (20/2021) amounted to EGP 826.8 billion Egyptian, of which EGP 637 billion are public investments, representing 77% of the total investments.
El-Said added that the per capita share of public investments has developed in recent years, reaching during the current year (20/2021) about EGP 6,142, an increase of 25% over the previous year, and it is estimated that the per capita share will reach EGP 8,828 next year, an increase of 45% compared to the current year.
El-Said explained that the development efforts to implement the current year's plan 20/2021 came under exceptional and unprecedented circumstances the world is witnessing in light of the Corona pandemic, which imposed on all countries to rearrange priorities.

 El-Said stressed the importance of many areas that represent urgent priorities for most countries of the world, such as healthcare and social protection, education, and digital transformation.

“The state has been keen to intensify public investments in these areas, and implement many development programs and initiatives that improve the quality of life for the Egyptian citizen, foremost among them: the initiative for a Decent Life, lifeboats, doubling the intensive care beds, and ambulance points, reducing the intensity of classes, and linking the outputs of technical education to the labor market through polytechnics and technology universities.
El-Said highlighted the special importance of the "Decent Life" initiative or the national project for the development of the Egyptian countryside. The first phase of the initiative was launched in January 2019 and targeted 375 villages.

 The "Decent Life” initiative contributed to reducing poverty rates in some villages by 11 percentage points, and resulted in an improvement in the rate of access to basic services by about 50 percentage points in some villages, and also contributed to alleviating the effects of the Coronavirus on the lives of 4.5 million citizens.

 The success of the “Decent Life” Initiative was culminated recently by inclusion by the United Nations within the "SDGs Good Practices".


El-Said added that to complement the success achieved in the first phase, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi directed the expansion of this initiative, as the second phase of the initiative was launched within the framework of the national project for the development of the Egyptian countryside, targeting all the villages of the Egyptian countryside (4584 villages in which more than half of the population lives Egypt - 50 million citizens), to be transformed into sustainable rural communities that meet all development needs within three years.

The total cost of the second phase exceeds EGP 700 billion, which enhances the state’s efforts to localize sustainable development goals and achieve balanced regional development, which is one of the main pillars of Egypt’s Vision 2030.

El-Said added that the government has also worked to intensify efforts to localize sustainable development goals in the governorates, to maximize the relative advantages of all governorates, and to set an indicator to determine the comparative advantage of each governorate, and to give precedence in financing public investments to priority sectors according to the development gaps in each governorate.


El-Said stressed that efforts to increase public investments and implement these programs and initiatives have played a catalytic role in advancing economic growth, as upward growth rates have been achieved in the past five years, reaching 5.6% in the first half of 2020/19, before the impact of the Coronavirus repercussions of the virus which negatively affected all economies of the world.


 “Despite the crisis, the Egyptian economy achieved a growth rate of 3.6% during (19/2020), as Egypt came among a limited number of countries in the world that achieved positive growth in light of the pandemic,” El-Said said.


El-Said pointed out that among the positive indicators of economic performance, the achieved growth rates are coupled with low unemployment rates, which fell - despite the Corona pandemic - to 7.4% in the first quarter of 2021 (January-March), compared to 7.5% in the corresponding quarter of the previous year, the annual unemployment rate decreased from 13% in 2014 to 7.9% in 2019.


 The inflation rate also declined to 4.4% in April 2021 (on an annual basis) and 1.2% (monthly), its lowest level in 14 years, which confirms the strength of the Egyptian economy and its ability to face crises.