Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El Said said the unemployment rates announced on Thursday, came in accordance with the high growth rates that Egypt has attained in the first half of FY 2019/2020 which hit 5.6 percent. On Thursday, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) said that Egypt's unemployment rates declined to 7.7 percent during the first quarter of 2020, down from eight percent during the same period in 2019, and hiked to 9.2 percent from the end of March to the end of April on the back of the preventive measures the government has adopted to contain the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. In its recent global and regional outlooks, issued in April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expected Egypt's unemployment rate to hit 10.3 percent in 2020, and 11.6 percent in 2021 amid the COVID-19 crisis, compared to 8.8 percent recorded in 2019.
