Egypt's Prime Minister Sharif Ismail met Thursday with a number of Egyptian parliamentarians from Cairo governorate to discuss the government's program and the demands of their constituencies' residents, Al-Bawaba News reported. Ismail stressed that the restructuring of the tax system does not mean we are talking about adding new taxes on the citizens, explaining that the value added tax draft law will have a significant role in the integration of the informal economy into the formal economy. The government program is based on reducing the budget deficit, reducing the trade deficit and the import bill in order to increase exports, Ismail said. He added that the government seeks to raise the efficiency of the domestic products. The meeting was attended by Minister of Local Development Ahmed Zaki Badr and Minister of Legal Affairs Magdy El Agaty. The meeting comes in the framework of a series of meetings conducted by the prime minister with MPs to discuss the current challenges and the ways to overcome them.
