The Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said expected the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic to extend until the first quarter and possibly the first half of the fiscal year 202/21.
El-Said, during her participation in a dialogue with a number of businessmen, in the presence of the Nabila Makram, Minister of Immigration, said on Friday that the Egyptian economy is expected to achieve a growth rate of 3.5% during the FY 2020/21, if the virus outbreak ends in the current fiscal year.
She pointed out that the pandemic impact is expected to extend to Q1 of FY 2021/20 or the entire first half, but if the crisis persists until December 2020, the target growth rate is expected to drop to 2%.
El-Said asserted that there are two scenarios to recover from the coronavirus crisis, which are containing the virus by the end of June, or by the end of December, and each of them has a specific shock that will affect different degrees in different sectors, noting that in the case of recovery, all sectors do not recover in a similar way, except that some sectors have great resilience, crisis resilience, and rapid recovery.
The Minister of Planning added that most of the global institutions unanimously agreed that the current crisis is more severe than previous economic crises due to many reasons, including that it affected both sides of supply and demand together with global value chains, and stopped manufacturing activity in many countries, resulting in declining wages, in addition to high unemployment as well as declining consumer confidence.
Egypt achieves highest growth in the region amid coronavirus
On the expectations of international institutions for the performance of the growth of the Egyptian economy, El-Said indicated that the World Bank indicated that Egypt is the best performing indicator of statistical capabilities among the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), making it the only country that is expected to achieve positive GDP growth rates between the economies of the region.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also indicated that Egypt is the only country in the region that maintains economic growth.
On her part, Makram asked the businessmen to submit their proposals on how to integrate the returning Egyptians from abroad into the local economy, stressing that the state seeks to integrate them by facilitating the investment opportunities presented, within the framework of the state’s endeavor to alleviate the economic repercussions resulting from the outbreak of the coronavirus.
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