Five years ago the poor represented 20 % of the population. Just before the world crisis we had managed to get this number down to about 15.5 to 16 % and we were making progress. Poverty rates have gone up from 15.5-16 % to maybe 18.5 % now, Egypt's finance minister said on Thursday. He added, "We're hoping we won't lose all of the progress we've made over the past five years." A series of reforms initiated in 2004 had boosted Egypt's growth rate and helped bring down its budget deficit. Egypt's economic growth may reach an annualised rate of 4.5 % in the second quarter of 2009, but it was still too early to say the economy had turned a corner, Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali told Reuters. Egypt's growth had already risen from 4.1 % in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 4.3 % in the first quarter of this year, he said on the sidelines of a conference in Cairo. "That's a good sign but we need to see another quarter, where the growth grows more, to be able to say we have turned the corner." "Things are beginning to pick up. The outlook is not as bleak as we thought and it is not going to be as difficult as we thought, exactly mirroring what is happening to the rest of the world," Boutros-Ghali said.
