Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said on Thursday that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has instructed the ministry to raise the monthly bonus of intern doctors who work in university and Al-Azhar hospitals from EGP 400 to EGP 700 to receive EGP 2,200 per month. Maait said the increase will be applied retroactively from December 2019 to medicine faculty graduates. About 12,000 intern doctors are expected to benefit from the increase which will cost a total of EGP 320 million annually. He added that EGP 100 million were already given to the Supreme Council of University Hospitals to finance the increase. “As per President El-Sisi's directives, the FY 2020/2021 draft budget includes a 75 percent increase in the allowance of medical professions, to be given to doctors and nurses, to raise it to EGP 1,225 a month with a total cost of EGP 2.25 billion. Doctors, who are university staff members, will benefit from the increase as well. A risk fund for medical professionals will be established as well,” Maait said. FY 2020/2021 will see a new package in force that aims to improve the financial conditions of state employees, including healthcare sector workers, through allocating a monthly bonus of seven percent of the basic salary for employees working under are the civil service law, and a bonus of 12 percent of the basic salary for those not subject to the law, including doctors, according to Maait's statement. It also added that an extra bonus will be given to all workers and employees in monthly sums ranging between EGP 150 and EGP 375. Workers in the healthcare sector will also benefit from the rising of tax exemption coiling that ranges from EGP 8,000 up to EGP 15,000, in addition to the personal exemption limit of EGP 7,000. In other words, the salary of EGP 24,000 that reaches EGP 22,000 after excluding insurance sums will be totally exempted from taxes, Maait added. He said that EGP 1.5 billion are allocated in the FY 2020/2021 draft budget to finance state employees' promotions. Maait asserted that the political leadership pays great attention to the healthcare sector's support to improve the financial conditions of doctors and sector's workers, which will help in upgrading healthcare services introduced to the public. In Egypt, the total number of infections has reached 779 nationwide, while the death toll stands at 52.
