Maait: Financial reform efforts positively reflected on budget indicators despite pandemic

Maait: Financial reform efforts positively reflected on budget indicators despite pandemic

Maait's remarks were made during his meeting with Belgian Ambassador in Cairo François Cornet d'Elzius.

 



Maait said the budget deficit decreased to stand at 7.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while the initial surplus was put at 1.8 during fiscal year 2019/2020. The public debt put at 108 percent of GDP in June 2017 recorded a decrease to reach 88 percent in June 2020 despite a rise in the average governmental debt rates for all world countries to hit 15 percent of the GDP during 2020.

 



The economic reforms introduced in Egypt has beefed up the solidity of its economy and enabled it to deal with resilience and balance with the negative repercussions of the coronavirus crisis, Maait explained, adding that Egypt succeeded in achieving a positive growth rate of 3.6 percent during the past fiscal year, placing Cairo in the third rank of the highest growth rates worldwide.

 



He added that Egypt's promising projects of modernizing and digitizing the tax and customs systems would greatly contribute to luring national and foreign investments to various sectors.

 



 



The finance minister explained that the first phase of e-tax filling system was launched in January, 2021 at the Egyptian Tax Authority (ETA) centers for the large