Ministry of Planning and Economic Development participates in an introductory workshop for WYF 2022 on the presidential initiative "Decent Life"

The Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, represented by the Ministry's Modeling Unit, participated in an introductory workshop for the World Youth Forum (WYF) 2022, on the "Decent Life" initiative as a comprehensive multi-dimensional program to alleviate poverty.


During the workshop, Dr. Reham Rizk, Director of the Modeling Unit, explained that before the implementation of the "Decent Life" initiative, the national poverty rate had reached 32.5% in 2017/2018 and was mainly concentrated in rural communities, especially in Upper Egypt.


Therefore, the government decided to expand the scope of the social protection and poverty reduction program and launch the first phase of a decent life in January 2019 to target the 375 poorest villages.



 Rizk added that in 2019/2020 the poverty rate decreased to 29.7%, and in comparison between 2017/2018 and 2019/2020, poverty in rural villages decreased by 3.6% compared to only 1.63% in urban villages, and this indicates the significant positive impact of decent life interventions poverty, especially in Upper Egypt.


Rizk noted that the COVID-19 outbreak has exacerbated the situation worldwide and increased global extreme poverty, and the Egyptian government has proactively taken important steps to address and mitigate the impact of the outbreak by expanding social protection interventions.



In 2021, the second and third phases of the Decent Life Initiative were launched, targeting all rural villages (4,584 villages) and not just the poorest villages (375 villages) with a budget of more than 800 billion pounds.


The modeling unit director added that according to the latest data derived from a decent life between January 2021 - December 2022, we can see that the interventions are already going to the neediest governorates according to the poverty map in Egypt (Assiut, Sohag, Minya, Qena).

Interventions within the framework of a decent life in general and within the framework of the third pillar in particular (job creation) helped mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19 on employment during the pandemic.


The results also reflect job opportunities that are utilized through infrastructure projects that account for the lion's share (64 percent) of the initiative's resources.