Maait: Communication, Education Sectors Least Affected During Corona Crises

The Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait indicated that it is certain that financial indicators, debt rates and ratios will be affected negatively as a result of the current situation, the most important of which is the decline and slowdown in the rates of local and global economic activity, yet, the financial impact depends on the time period of the crisis and the measures taken.

He noted that the least affected sectors in the Egyptian economy are the communications sector, information technology, and educational services.

This came during a meeting of the economic group the repercussions of the spread of the novel Corona epidemic on the global and Egyptian economic activities in relation to the most important indicators of public finance and debt.

With regard to the expected impact on the indicators of the global economy, the Minister of Finance indicated that global markets were subjected to major shocks with the rapid spread of the coronavirus, as the data indicate that the main indicators for all global stock exchanges and stock exchanges of emerging countries and Arab countries have dropped significantly between 20-30% during The first quarter of 2020.

He pointed out that despite the low estimates of growth rates for the region and all emerging countries, including Egypt, the growth estimates for Egypt are the highest in the region and are almost equal to the expected growth rates for China and India.

The Finance Minister highlighted that Fitch Ratings downgraded its estimates at the beginning of April 2020 to global growth rates, as it expects a shrink of about -1.9% instead of an average growth rate of 3% in the previous three years.

Standard & Poor's (S&P) also reduced its estimates of global growth on March 31 to 0.4%, indicating that 80% of major multinational companies have reduced annual revenue estimates by 30% on average, which will contribute to reducing investments, expenditures, and consequently Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows by 40-50%.

The Minister presented the impact of the virus on the most important Egyptian economic and financial indicators, including purchasing performance, production, and future deliveries. On the other hand, the least affected sectors are the communications sector, information technology, and educational services.