Devaluation alone can’t solve Egypt’s economic woes -ECMA Chairman. Mohamed Taymour, chairman of both the Egyptian Capital Markets Association and Pharos Holding, penned an op-ed piece for Al Shorouk discussing why he believes devaluation alone cannot solve Egypt’s economic woes. Egypt has not implemented structural reforms to support devaluation, meaning domestic and foreign markets will continue to operate assuming the EGP will devalue against the USD unless faith is restored in the economy’s ability to grow.

….Taymour highlights measures critical to a durable economic recovery: To redress the budget deficit, the subsidy system needs to be revised to subsidize people and not commodities and services, a policy that has left public transportation, railways, education and healthcare in tatters. Second, he says, we need to reform the bureaucracy, weeding out under-performers and while also amending articles 115 and 116 of the Criminal Code to protect civil servants from politically motivated prosecution for otherwise good decisions made fairly. The third measure is establishing an Egyptian economic identity as a free market open to foreign investment with the government playing a supervisory role and not a competing investor. The government can address this by partially or completely selling state owned companies, Taymour says.