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Sisi pledges economic stability within 6 months

December 29, 2016 at 5:08 pm

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said yesterday that the tough economic conditions in Egypt would improve in six months, Reuters reported.

Speaking at the opening of a fish farm project in the Ismailia province, Al-Sisi called on businessmen and investors to stand beside the government to help stabilise the local economy.

“I am not just telling the government, I am also telling citizens, businessmen and investors: please stand beside your country Egypt for just six months and you will find things much better than they are now,” the Egyptian Television Network reported Al-Sisi saying.

He went on to call for collective sacrifices in order to save the country from financial ruin. “The efforts to alleviate those effects are massive,” he reiterated.

Al-Sisi praised Egyptians for the way they dealt with harsh economic reforms. “The current economic measures are quite hard and their impact is quite difficult… Egyptians are capable and aware enough to differentiate between good measures and bad measures,” he said.

Last November, Egypt abandoned its currency’s peg to the dollar in a move aimed at attracting capital inflows and weakening a currency black market that had all-but displaced banks.

The flotation helped the cash-strapped government clinch a $12 billion IMF loan programme it hopes will revive growth hampered by political uncertainty since the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Egypt also raised electricity prices by 25-40 per cent and introduced a 13 per cent value-added tax in August.

The Egyptian pound lost about 110 per cent of its value during the past two and half years.

Egyptians, many of whom are forced to scrape by from day to day, feel hard-hit by tax rises, soaring food prices and cuts in state subsidies. Prices in the most populous Arab country are likely to keep rising next year, economists say, driven by the reforms.