Egyptian Competitiveness Report: Egyptian Economy Subjected to Terrible Pressure Due to the Global Financial Crisis

The Egyptian Competitiveness Report warned against the dangers of the terrible pressure, resulting from the global financial crisis. The report confirms that such dangers might badly affect weaknesses that strongly shape the Egyptian economy before the crisis. However, such weaknesses, as stated by the report, included the dangers of the enlarged financial deficit, the limited financial range and high inflation rates.

Moreover, this report pointed out to the fact that the global financial crisis was a difficult test for the Egyptian economy's strong foundations, which would be able to sustain the decreasing rates of growth in the world, thus pushing the Egyptian economy down with them.

Furthermore, the report, to be officially announced today, added that despite the decrease of Egyptian Low Budget Domestic Sector's net debt from 67.4% in June 2004 to 53.4% in June 2008, as well as the decrease of net domestic public debt from 46.8% to 43.1% during the same period, those rates are to be doubled in countries such as India, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico and Tunisia.


On his part, the Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry, Eng. Rashid Mohamed Rashid said: "No one can deny that the crisis has caused marked losses for the Egyptian economy and reduced expected growth rates." Rashid also declared to Al-Masry Al-Youm, that the good news was the fact that these consequences were nothing compared to the worse expectations of the Egyptian government. He added that, the exports decline rate reached only 7%, although he personally expected it to range between 15 to 20 %.

Mr. Rashid continued to say that his point of view was to be enhanced by the slowdown encountered by all forms of trade all over the world with a slowdown rate of 25% during the first few months of the global economic crisis.

Rashid blessed the recommendations contained in the Competitiveness Report 2008; especially with regard to increasing the rates of human development. Rates of human development were seen by Rashid as the basic indicator of achieving growth rates targeted by the Egyptian economy during the coming years.