Egypt's Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said said targets of Egypt's development plan for fiscal year (FY) 2020/2021 include attaining high, sustainable economic growth of 5.8 percent, and a GDP growth of 12.5 percent. El-Said's comments came during a meeting on Tuesday with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to discuss the three-year plan of FY2020/2021 for sustainable development (2018/2019 and 2021/2022). El-Said said the expected economic growth rate was concluded despite the current indices that projected a slowdown in the global economic growth that already witnessed a slowdown of 3.2 percent in 2017, three percent in 2018 and 2.6 percent in 2019. The World Bank projected greater downward in 2020, estimated at 2.5 percent. The plan targets providing 850,000 job opportunities with a stable unemployment rate of eight percent, curbing inflation, providing social insurance and protection for medium- and low-income classes. For the FY 2020/2021 development plan's investment targets, the minister said that investments are targeted to reach EGP 1.3 trillion, 55 percent of which to be directed towards public investments to meet the constitutional deadlines, achieving the required expansions in the healthcare and education sectors to meet the challenge of overpopulation, in addition to achieving the plan's initiatives on healthcare, social protection and to correct imbalances in income distribution patterns.
