04:11 PM
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
I wrote – Shaima Hefzy:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its forecasts for the growth of the Egyptian economy during the current fiscal year, again, expecting it to grow by 4%, compared to an expected growth of 4.4% in a previous report last October.
This came according to the documents of the Fund’s agreement to cooperate in a new program with Egypt for economic reform, which was approved by the Fund’s Executive Board on December 16, as the Fund released the report today.
This is the third reduction in the expected growth of Egypt’s economy during the fiscal year that is scheduled to end next June, as the Fund previously expected the economy to grow by 5%, then lowered its forecast to 4.8% last July.
The Egyptian economy is under pressure as a result of global changes since the Russian-Ukrainian war and the tightening of monetary policy globally, with the US Federal Reserve’s tendency to raise interest rates to curb high inflation, which led to fears of slowing global economic growth that could lead to recession.
The fund expected that the growth of the Egyptian economy would rise again during the next fiscal year, to record 5.3%, then 5.7% in the fiscal year 2024-2025, then 5.9% during the fiscal years 2026-2027 and 2027-2028.