Egypt is gearing up to remove the majority of fuel subsidies by the start of the next financial year in July. Cairo spent E£121bn ($6.8bn) in the 2017-18 financial year and is on course to spend E£90bn ($5.1bn) in the current financial year (see chart 1).
Egypt’s central bank chief Tarek Amer and Finance Minister Mohamed Maait, in a recent letter to the IMF, published this week as part of the Fund’s latest review of its $12bn Egypt program, say the country has already increased domestic prices for gasoline, diesel, kerosene and fuel oil to “about 85-90%” of market prices and that Egypt “will make additional increases to achieve our objective of 100% cost recovery by 15 June 2019.” (CONTINUED - 883 WORDS)
