An official source at the Egyptian Ministry of Finance said the ministries of finance and culture had not taken hold of two grants by the city of Sharjah to the Egyptian Writers' Union, thus denying what had been reported by some newspapers. The source said one LE 20 million grant had been deposited at the Arab Bank on February 17, 2008 by the Union itself. He also added that another LE 1.2 million grant, donated by Sharjah's ruler, had been deposited by the Union at the Banque du Caire on March 27, 2008. The source added that all the ministries did was to carry out the administrative measures to accept the grants. He said notes were prepared for Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who then issued two decrees about the Ministry of Culture's accepting the grants and allocating them to the Union's pension fund. The source then explained that last September the Ministry of Culture had asked the Ministry of Finance to modify its budget based on such grants only as an administrative measure related to the amendments in the State budget, denying any intention to take these two grants away from the Union. The source added that the LE 21.2 million grants are an exclusive right of the Union's pension fund and that the Union itself had been left free by the Ministry of Finance to spend this money. "The administrative procedures to modify the culture ministry's budget don't mean depriving the Union's from the right of using this money for the purposes for which it has been allocated" the source affirmed. The Ministry of Finance does not know why the Union has not spent this money on late novelist Youssef Abu Rayya or others all this time instead of blaming the finance ministry for this negligence, the source also said, adding that the ministry itself has never included this money in its calculations.
