Cairo – Mubasher: Egypt’s Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maait, said his country’s economy is a shining star among emerging markets and that its performance surpassed expectations despite the coronavirus crisis as shown by the assessments of international rating and financing institutions headed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
He added that the country entered the pandemic stage stronger than it was two years earlier, emphasising that the state is on the right track and that it had already achieved its financial and economic targets ahead of the COVID-19 outbreak, according to the 2020 report, titled “Challenges and Achievements”.
In addition, he noted that Egypt, according to the IMF’s report, will be the only country seeing positive economic growth in the MENA region during the current fiscal year.
Recently, the IMF said Egypt has the second-highest growth rate in the world by 3.6%, while the World Bank said the Arab state has become Africa’s bright spot after foreign direct investment (FDI) rose by 11%.
Moreover, Bloomberg said Egypt withstood the economic impact of the pandemic so successfully and that it was among the world’s ten fastest-growing economies during 2020.
Maait said that the country registered an initial surplus of 1.8% and that the debt ratio fell to 88% by the end of June 2020.
The most populous Arab nation has further jumped 14 spots in the Ease of Doing Business report during the past two years. Furthermore, JP Morgan said Egypt was the only economy in the MENA region that kept the confidence of international credit rating agencies amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, Deutsche Bank previously noted that Egypt has become the most attractive in terms of the flows of stock portfolios in the emerging markets in 2020, ranking as the fifth biggest concentration for foreigners and witnessing the third-largest decline in interest rates.
The IHS Markit Egypt Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), focusing on the non-oil private sector, increased to 51.4 in October 2020, recording its highest levels since December 2014.
