Sisi: Dollar shortage crisis in Egypt still a challenge for the State

Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, has mentioned again his country hosting about nine million refugees and that hosting them costs over $10 billion per year. He claimed that they “consume water at a rate of 4.5 billion cubic meters per year, which requires the establishment of new desalination and water treatment plants at a very large cost,” in light of the dollar shortage crisis in Egypt, which still poses a challenge for the country, he said.

Al-Sisi said, at the opening of the harvest season of the Future of Egypt project, which is supervised by the army, and is located along the Cairo-Dabaa Road, that the number of Egyptians inside the country is approximately 106 million people, in addition to nine million people from other nationalities, while the average per capita water consumption in Egypt is estimated at about 500 cubic meters per year, meaning that the country “needs to save at least 57.5 billion cubic meters of water annually.”

Al-Sisi added, on Monday, that “the dollar shortage crisis in Egypt was and still is a challenge for the State, and the solution is to make local production very large in order to cover the citizens’ needs for basic goods, and export the surplus abroad,” adding, “I am fed up myself, and the government is burdened with me with huge expenses to build the state; I had no other solution,” he said.

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“Developing irrigation and agricultural systems is necessary to achieve the maximum benefit from Egypt’s water resources,” noting that “the cost of investments in the field of agriculture is very high,” said Al-Sisi. He called on the private sector to “lend a helping hand to state institutions and participate in the national projects that they implement.” He continued, “We must make use of every drop of water in Egypt, and use agricultural systems that consume less water,” claiming that “the road projects that the State implemented in only three or four years, in order to maximise the benefit from arable land, would have taken about 200 years if it were implemented in the past.”

The dollar shortage crisis in Egypt worsened with the outbreak of the Russian war on Ukraine, then the outbreak of the Israeli war against the Gaza Strip in 2023, and the loss of about 50 per cent of Suez Canal revenues due to Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea. There has also been a decline in tourism sector revenues, and a decrease in remittances from Egyptians working abroad by about 30 per cent.

However, the government announced a deal to develop the Ras Al-Hikma region on the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast, with Emirati investments amounting to $35 billion, with Egypt receiving $10 billion as a first payment, provided that it maintains its right to a 35 per cent share of the project’s profits.

Egypt also signed a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund, under which it will obtain a loan worth $8 billion, $5 billion more than what was agreed upon in December 2022, in addition to another loan worth $1.2 billion from the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust.

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