An international research company says that the Egyptian government spent close to LE350 million on advertising in the last two years. The research was done by ABSU, which put the exact amount spent on advertising at LE347,846,290, including both public service campaigns and promotions of government products and services. LE65,125,587 was spent on an awareness campaign against swine flu in 2009, the highest spending on this type of campaign, according to the report. The research laid out the exact amount spent by various ministries in 2008/2009. The Finance Ministry spent LE131 million, followed by the Health Ministry with LE109 million, the Housing Ministry with LE16 million, the Tourism Ministry with LE15 million, the Interior Ministry with LE9 million, the Trade and Industry Ministry with LE1 million and the Water Resources Ministry with LE0.186 million. Company manager Amr Qeiss said the above figures are for direct media spending and do not include film production costs, payments to celebrities or discounts from ad agencies. He also said some of these campaigns were ambiguous. "I didn't understand if the shares and stocks campaign aimed at selling title deeds to the public or encouraging investment in the stock exchange were included in the report." "Ramadan TV series producers have benefited the most from all that spending," Qeiss added. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
