Egypt's 2004 human development report makes clear that administrative, fiscal and political decentralisation provide the true path to comprehensive civil service reform. Mona El-Fiqi reports The diminishing quality of Egypt's public services, the increasing bureaucratic bottlenecks faced by the general public, and the ineffective use of limited resources are just a few of Egypt's many problems. The 2004 Egypt human development report issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests decentralisation as a panacea for these woes. Decentralisation's importance, according to the report, is in its association with independent decision-making and the transferal of competencies, with the net goal being raising the quality of basic services delivery. The report looked into three aspects of decentralisation. Its political facet relates to a greater degree of democracy at the local level to ensure more community participation in decision- making. The administrative side shifts decision- making authority to lower levels in the administrative hierarchy -- to respond to citizens' needs at the grassroots. Finally, fiscal decentralisation provides greater discretion in the mobilisation and spending of funds. The report also provides evidence that any decentralisation process needs to be carefully designed to ensure that every region benefits equally. According to the report, some regions will have special development problems, and decentralisation will not deliver the anticipated benefits unless particular compensatory mechanisms are put in place. The report recommends utilising the Human Development Index (HDI) as a means of identifying poor communities and targeting assistance to reduce the gap between rich and poor regions. At the report's launch ceremony, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif declared that the government has the political will to achieve gradual decentralisation. "We need to focus a lot on human resources development on all levels and in all governorates," he said. Decentralisation, according to the report, is not an end in itself, but an energetic response to today's complex requirements. "It is a means to improve the quality and delivery of services using the active participation of all stakeholders, in partnership with a government that provides vision, sets standards, regulates and monitors performance." said American University in Cairo (AUC) economics professor Heba Handousa, the report's lead author. The report indicates that population growth (about 2.1 per cent per year) places considerable pressures on the country's already limited resources. At the same time, a relatively low literacy level is holding the country back. In this respect, Nazif said, Egypt "needs a nationwide programme in which NGOs play a crucial role". That kind of positive public contribution, he said, is important because no matter what the government does, it will not be enough. In fact, those two factors -- the rising population rate and an inability to bring illiteracy rates down -- are the main reasons why Egypt ranked a mediocre 120 out of the world's 177 countries in the global human development ranking. The report estimates that if education were removed as an HDI factor, Egypt would immediately jump 25-30 places up the global HDI ranking. That may be because progress has actually been made in many other development-related areas. The nation saw a general upward trend in its HDI between 1975 and 2001, when it rose 49.6 per cent -- from 0.433 to 0.648. That steady improvement allowed Egypt to rise from the low to the medium category of human development. The report said that between 1990 and 2002, literacy rates increased by 48 per cent, and basic secondary education enrolment ratio went up by 10.7 per cent. As for poverty and income distribution, per capita GDP increased from LE5.5/day in 2001 to LE5.7/day in 2002, a modest increase given the slowdown in the growth of the Egyptian economy in general over the past three years. The number of poor persons as a percentage of the total population decreased from 16.7 to 16.3 per cent between 2000 and 2001. The report said the total unemployment rate was 10.2 per cent in 2002. It was highest among secondary school graduates (20.4 per cent), followed by university graduates (14.4 per cent). With females representing 21.8 per cent of the labour force, their unemployment rate was 23.9 per cent in 2002. On the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), Egypt also ranked poorly -- at 75 out of 78 countries; its GEM value was 0.266, compared to 0.908 for Norway, the highest-ranking nation.
