Falling budget deficit, criteria for new subsidy beneficiaries dominates Last Night’s Talk Shows
Egypt’s falling budget deficit and new eligibility criteria for subsidy beneficiaries were front and center on the airwaves last night.
The budget deficit narrowed to 10.9% in FY2016-17 from 12.5% a year before “without any help from Arab neighbors,” Finance Minister Amr El Garhy told Masaa DMC’s Osama Kamal in an interview. The primary deficit also dropped to 1.8% from 3.6%, El Garhy said, thanks to a 28.7% y-o-y rise in state income, driven largely by revenues from taxes, the Suez Canal, and state-run companies. Expenditures climbed a fairly modest 22% y-o-y, the minister added (watch, runtime 6:13).
The government will continue to focus on strengthening the social safety net in the FY2017-18 budget, El Garhy told Kamal, explaining that the state is spending EGP 85 bn on food subsidies this year, compared to EGP 47-48 bn in FY2016-17 (watch, runtime 2:55). Other measures include recent income tax cuts for both public- and private-sector employees, which will cost state coffers some EGP 7-8 bn (watch, runtime 5:51).
El Garhy hopes to see tax revenues rise as a percentage of GDP to 17% from a current 13% over the next four years, promising people a gradual shift “to a completely different country in three-to-five years’ time” (watch, runtime 7:31).
Over on Yahduth fi Misr, tightened regulations for food subsidy eligibility took centerstage. Supply Ministry spokesperson Mohamed Sewed implied to host Sherif Amer that Tuesday’s decision might somehow be temporary. He explained that setting the monthly income threshold for eligibility for new ration cards at EGP 1,500 is not meant to exclude anyone from subsidy rolls but rather to help the ministry address needs that are presently more pressing.
Another Supply Ministry spokesperson, Mamdouh Ramadan, told Hona Al Asema’s Dina Zahra (sitting in for Lamees El Hadidy) that the ministry will form a social justice committee that will reassess eligibility criteria at the end of the fiscal year. He also said that new beneficiaries can begin applying to the rolls as of today under the newly-set conditions (watch, runtime: 36:28).