Egypt’s total public debt jumped to $283 billion, including $45.3 billion dollars in foreign debt at the end of March, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics revealed.
The agency stated that the country’s internal debt increased by about 18 per cent, reaching $238 billion by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
This means that the total Egyptian debt exceeds the country’s GDP which reached $272 billion during the last fiscal year. The rate of the Egyptian debt compared to the GDP was 89.5 per cent in 2012 during the rule of the deposed President Mohamed Morsi, now it is 104 per cent.
With this, Egypt ranks at the top of the Arab countries in terms of the size of its debt, coming second only after Lebanon in terms of the ratio of public debt to GDP, as Lebanon’s ratio is 134 per cent.
While the Egyptian government is continuing its borrowing approach, the Egyptian Ministry of Finance’s numbers confirm that the interest incurred during the first 10 months of the last fiscal year has grown by over 20 per cent, reaching over $31 billion.
Source: Al Jazeera.net