Cairo - Mubasher: The Egyptian government seeks cutting the 2017/2018 budget deficit to around 9% of the gross domestic product (GDP), the minister of finance, Amr El-Garhy, said.
El-Garhy added in a statement on Sunday that this rate comes as opposed to the current levels that reached 13% in the last years.
The minister’s remarks came at the end of the fourth workshop of the Ministry of Finance’s (MoF) Strategic Planning Forum.
Next year’s budget will be the first since the government went through with the economic reform programme in coordination with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to control the staggering budget deficit and restructure the Egyptian economy, reforming both subsidies and exchange rate systems.
In November, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) floated the Egyptian pound and reduced fuel subsidies. It then received $2.75 billion as the first tranche of the IMF loan, which totals $12 billion.
