Inflation will average 21.6% by the end of state’s 2016-17 fiscal year, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said at a government-run youth conference in Ismailia yesterday. Inflation is running at over 30%, but Ismail sees it dropping by the end of June, Al Masry Al Youm reports. The prime minister sees the average inflation rate falling further still to 15.2% in FY2017-18. He noted that the country’s heavy reliance on imports has played the biggest role in pushing up inflation, according to Al Mal. Egypt’s food exports have risen 25% over the past three months and there are plans in place to increase local production of the foods we import in large quantities, Agriculture Minister Abdel Moneim El Banna said at the conference, Al Mal reports. The prime minister also said that tax revenues account for 15% of Egypt’s GDP, a low figure in comparison to other countries, Al Borsa reports. Ismail said he expects the state to end the current fiscal year with a 10% budget deficit. On a separate note, Ismail said the Health Ministry is studying several scenarios to address rising meds prices, but maintained that the ministry’s decision to hike prices earlier this year was necessary to ensure industry kept producing, the newspaper reports.

Ismail also announced that the new Investment Act should be in place in May, with the government having already “approved a draft for the law in March 2015 with a view to bolstering investor confidence, easing bureaucracy and attracting foreign investments.” The government is aiming for FDI of USD 9.4 bn in FY2016-17. As of last week, the law was stalled in the House Economics Committee amid what appear to be disagreements about semantics.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi was also focused on the economy and the government’s effort to improve living conditions in his speech at the conference. He pointed to the ballooning population as one of the country’s biggest hurdles, noting that Egypt’s economy must grow 9% per annum to keep up with our annual population growth rate. Acknowledging that times are tough for the average citizen, El Sisi said that the country’s economic progress came to a halt in 1967, as successive governments shied away from taking necessary steps to spur growth. Repeating his previous (and controversial) statement that Egypt is a poor country with scant resources, he said that our economic renaissance will take several years and called on Egyptians to hang in there for one more year. The government is struggling to finance three agricultural projects it launched to provide food at affordable prices, according to El Sisi. He also pointed to the inefficiency of state bodies in implementing the government’s vision on the ground as another culprit for the lack of progress, singling out the 1.5 mn feddans project in specific.

El Sisi said that he respects the judiciary’s conclusion on the Tiran and Sanafir island agreement, and that the House of Representatives also has a role to play in determining the outcome of the case. You can watch his remarks in full here (runtime 27:48).