Egypt’s telecom sector grows by 15.2% despite coronavirus: Cabinet report

Egypt’s telecom sector grows by 15.2% despite coronavirus: Cabinet report

Egypt's information and communication technology (ICT) sector grew by 15.2 percent in 2020, becoming the most growing among other sectors, despite the COVID-19 repercussions, the cabinet's media centre revealed in a report issued on Thursday.

The report showed that the sector's share in Egypt's GDP rose to EGP 108 billion in FY 2019/2020 (4.4 percent), up from EGP 93.5 billion (3.8 percent) in FY 2018/2019.

The ICT sector's exports increased in 2020 to $4.1 billion, up from $3.6 billion in 2019 (growing by 13 percent). Investments in the sector rose by 35 percent to EGP 48.1 billion, up from EGP 35.4 billion in FY 2018/2019, stated the report.

The report said that 1,336 ICT companies have been founded with a total capital of EGP 1.34 billion.

The report demonstrated that Internet users to population ratio increased to 57.3 percent in FY 2019/2020, up from 47.6 percent in FY 2018/2019.

It also noted that the sector's infrastructure development cost recorded $400 million in the second half of 2020, which helped in increasing the Internet speed to 33.2MB per second by the end of November.

Concerning digital transformation efforts, the report said that 34 digital governmental services have been provided