Cairo – Mubasher: The Egyptian Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maait, reviewed a recent report by the World Bank on public spending on social protection for fiscal year (FY) 2019/2020, showing that the Egyptian government has made historic progress in extending social protection coverage.
The government has implemented several initiatives to protect the most vulnerable from adverse impacts of economic reforms through the Takaful and Karama cash transfer programme, social security pensions, training and employment programmes, soft loans, slum upgrading projects, social housing, universal health insurance system, and school feeding, Maait said in a statement on Tuesday.
About EGP 345 billion has been transferred to pension funds in 25 months since signing the entanglement settlement agreement with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, Maait added.
Moreover, the universal health insurance system has been implemented in Luxor and Port Said and work is currently underway to extend the system to Aswan, Ismailia, and South Sinai in a bid to cover all Egyptians with universal healthcare services.
Health initiatives also included the 100 million healthy lives initiative for the early detection of Hepatitis C virus and non-communicable diseases as well as the presidential initiative for eliminating waiting lists for patients in critical conditions under which more than 500,000 surgeries have been conducted.
As for social housing, the ministry allocated EGP 3.9 billion for subsidised loans for residential units in FY19/20. The FY21/21 budget includes EGP 321 billion for subsidies, including EGP 7.8 billion for social housing support, the minister added.
Public spending on social protection programmes reached 4.2% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in FY19/20 and food commodity subsidy programmes accounted for 1.4% of GDP.
More than 1.5 million casual workers obtained monthly financial assistance worth EGP 500 each for six months at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.
According to the World Bank's estimates, the Takaful and Karama cash transfer programme slashed the poverty rate by 5.2% during FY19/20.
