Overview: Egypt has one of the largest public sectors of all the Third World economies, 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 momentum and unemployment has become a growing problem. Egypt probably will continue making uneven progress in implementing the successor programs with the IMF and World Bank it signed onto in late 1993. In 1992-93 tourism plunged 20% or so because of sporadic attacks by Islamic extremists on tourist groups. President MUBARAK has cited population growth as the main cause of the country's economic troubles. The addition of about 1.4 million people a year to the already huge population of 60 million exerts enormous pressure on the 5% of the land area available for agriculture.

National product: GDP - purchasing power equivalent - $139 billion (1993 est.)

National product real growth rate: 0.3% (1993 est.)

National product per capita: $2,400 (1993 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 11% (1993 est.)

Unemployment rate: 20% (1993 est.)

Budget:
revenues: $16.8 billion
expenditures: $19.4 billion, including capital expenditures of $3.4 billion (FY94 est.)

Exports: $3.5 billion (f.o.b., FY93 est.)
commodities: crude oil and petroleum products, cotton yarn, raw cotton, textiles, metal products, chemicals
partners: EC, Eastern Europe, US, Japan

Imports: $10.5 billion (c.i.f., FY93 est.)
commodities: machinery and equipment, foods, fertilizers, wood products, durable consumer goods, capital goods
partners: EC, US, Japan, Eastern Europe

External debt: $32 billion (March 1993 est.)

Industrial production: growth rate -0.4% (FY92 est.); accounts for 18% of GDP

Electricity:
capacity: 14,175,000 kW
production: 47 billion kWh
consumption per capita: 830 kWh (1992)

Industries: textiles, food processing, tourism, chemicals, petroleum, construction, cement, metals

Agriculture: accounts for 20% of GDP and employs more than one-third of labor force; dependent on irrigation water from the Nile; world's sixth-largest cotton exporter; other crops produced include rice, corn, wheat, beans, fruit, vegetables; not self-sufficient in food for a rapidly expanding population; livestock - 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

Economic aid:
recipient: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-89), $15.7 billion; Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments (1970-88), $10.1 billion; OPEC bilateral aid (1979-89), $2.9 billion; Communist countries (1970-89), $2.4 billion

Currency: 1 Egyptian pound (#E) = 100 piasters
Exchange rates: Egyptian pounds (#E) per US$1 - 3.369 (November 1993), 3.345 (November 1992), 2.7072 (1990), 2.5171 (1989), 2.2233 (1988), 1.5183 (1987)

Fiscal year: 1 July - 30 June

NOTE: The information regarding Egypt on this page is re-published from the 1995 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Egypt Economy 1995 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Egypt Economy 1995 should be addressed to the CIA.