Egyptian authorities will help projects experiencing difficulties
2023.01.23 15:35
Egyptian authorities will help projects experiencing difficulties
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – On Monday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi defended the massive projects he has implemented since taking office, claiming that they are not to blame for the turmoil in the economy that has seen the currency plummet and inflation rise.
Egypt has spent a lot of money on its infrastructure since Sisi became president in 2014. The military has led the effort, which has included expanding the Suez Canal, building a new capital in the desert, and building a lot of roads.
It has been questioned by critics why the government invested tens of billions of dollars in the projects at a time when Egypt has struggled to control its debt and provide a growing population with public services like health care and education.
At the beginning of January, the government issued an order to reduce spending on non-essential items and postpone projects with a significant foreign currency component.
“Spending on public projects including national projects would be slowed down and adjusted to limit pressures on the foreign exchange market and inflation,” Egypt promised in a Nov. 30 letter of intent to obtain a $3 billion financial rescue package from the International Monetary Fund.
“I will speak about what’s being circulated, that the national projects are the cause of the crisis we’re in right now,” Sisi said in remarks made to commemorate Egypt’s annual police day.
“Could we not have developed the Suez Canal, whose income would have reached $8 billion in seven years?”
In 2015, the Suez Canal underwent its first expansion, and it is currently expanding again. Earlier in his reign, Sisi also mentioned investments in the power grid that led to a significant power surplus.
“While we had a power shortage, could we not have developed the electricity infrastructure to meet demand and achieve our goals for growth?” He stated
“We didn’t work on anything that wasn’t important or make a wrong calculation.”
The official date of Police Day is January 25, which is also the anniversary of the beginning of the Arab Spring, which brought down former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Two years later, Sisi overthrew Mohamed Mursi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader.
He frequently attributes the recent economic turmoil to the effects of Russia’s war on Ukraine and other global factors, and he has attributed the 2011 uprising to Egypt’s economic destabilization and stagnation.
