Parliament passes new financial laws

Parliament passes new financial laws

Before it adjourns for the summer recess at the end of this month, Egypt's parliament, the House of Representatives, has passed a number of financial laws.

At the top of the list is a law that will make an additional allocation of LE80 billion to the new 2020-21 budget. Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait told MPs on Sunday that the new allocation was necessary to settle part of the Ministry of Electricity's debts to the Ministry of Petroleum.

"These debts have reached a total of LE102 billion, and we want to use the additional budgetary allocation to settle part of this,“ Maait said.

He also indicated that part of the new allocation would be used to pay part of the total of LE160.5 billion in government installments that are due to the Insurance and Pensions Authority.

Maait said the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic had made it difficult to settle the payments, and so it had been necessary to find an additional allocation of LE80 billion in order to do so while cutting the public debt.

He said that it had been agreed two weeks ago that both the House of Representatives and the Finance Ministry would revise the new