Basic Country Facts

Economy Economic overview: Half of Egypt's GDP originates in the public sector, most industrial plants being owned by the government. Overregulation holds back technical modernization and foreign investment. Even so, the economy grew rapidly during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but in 1986 the collapse of world oil prices and an increasingly heavy burden of debt servicing led Egypt to begin negotiations with the IMF for balance-of-payments support. Egypt's first IMF standby arrangement, concluded in mid-1987, was suspended in early 1988 because of the government's failure to adopt promised reforms. Egypt signed a follow-on program with the IMF and also negotiated a structural adjustment loan with the World Bank in 1991. In 1991-93 the government made solid progress on administrative reforms such as liberalizing exchange and interest rates, but resisted implementing major structural reforms like streamlining the public sector. As a result, the economy has not gained enough momentum to tackle the growing problem of unemployment. Egypt made uneven progress in implementing the successor programs it signed onto in late 1993 with the IMF and World Bank; currently it is negotiating another successor program with the IMF. President MUBARAK has cited population growth as the main cause of the country's economic troubles. The addition of about 1.2 million people a year to the already huge population of 63 million exerts enormous pressure on the 5% of the land area available for agriculture along the Nile. GDP: purchasing power parity - $171 billion (1995 est.) GDP real growth rate: 4% (1995 est.) GDP per capita: $2,760 (1995 est.) GDP composition by sector: agriculture: NA% industry: NA% services: NA% Inflation rate (consumer prices): 9.4% (yearend 1995) Labor force: 16 million (1994 est.) by occupation: government, public sector enterprises, and armed forces 36%, agriculture 34%, privately owned service and manufacturing enterprises 20% (1984) note: shortage of skilled labor; 2.5 million Egyptians work abroad, mostly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states (1993 est.) Unemployment rate: 20% (1995 est.) Budget: revenues: $18 billion expenditures: $19.4 billion, including capital expenditures of $3.8 billion (FY94/95 est.) Industries: textiles, food processing, tourism, chemicals, petroleum, construction, cement, metals Industrial production growth rate: NA% Electricity: capacity: 11,830,000 kW production: 44.5 billion kWh consumption per capita: 695 kWh (1993) Agriculture: cotton, rice, corn, wheat, beans, fruits, vegetables; cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats; annual fish catch about 140,000 metric tons Illicit drugs: a transit point for Southwest Asian and Southeast Asian heroin and opium moving to Europe and the US; popular transit stop for Nigerian couriers; large domestic consumption of hashish from Lebanon and Syria Exports: $5.4 billion (f.o.b., FY94/95 est.) commodities: crude oil and petroleum products, cotton yarn, raw cotton, textiles, metal products, chemicals partners: EU, US, Japan Imports: $15.2 billion (c.i.f., FY94/95 est.) commodities: machinery and equipment, foods, fertilizers, wood products, durable consumer goods, capital goods partners: US, EU, Japan External debt: $33.6 billion (FY93/94 est.) Economic aid: recipient: ODA, $1.713 billion (1993) Currency: 1 Egyptian pound (£E) = 100 piasters Exchange rates: Egyptian pounds (£E) per US$1 - 3.4 (November 1994), 3.369 (November 1993), 3.345 (November 1992), 2.7072 (1990); market rate: 3.3920 (January 1996), 3.3900 (1995), 3.3910 (1994), 3.3718 (1993), 3.3386 (1992), 3.3322 (1991) Fiscal year: 1 July - 30 June